Research Guides: POLS 121: Introduction to American Politics (BMC): Legislative

Federal Legislative Branch Primary Documents

ProQuest Congressional
ProQuest Congressional is a good source for legislative histories (1969-date) and indexing of Congressional publications.

Help Using Proquest Congressional
Help with navigating and finding things in Proquest Congressional. Also includes a map of the legislative process.

Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Electronic Library
Common platform for CQ Press online products covering American government, politics, history, public policy, and current affairs. Allows cross-product searching.
Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Almanac
Provides full-text information on all major U. S. federal legislative activity for the covered period. Includes detailed commentary on issues, legislators, and controversies. Provides roll-call voting on major legislation. Browsable by subject, decade, or year. Covers 1945 - present (most recent update, 2018 edition).
HeinOnline
Provides searchable database of full text legal periodicals and primary documents. Subscribed libraries include: Law Journal Library, U.S. Congressional Documents, U.S. Federal Legislative History Library, U.S. Presidential Library, U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Supreme Court Library, and many others.

Congress.gov
Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. See the Coverage Dates for a full listing of what is in Congress.gov. It includes:
GovInfo
Provides free online access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.

History of Bills search on Govinfo
Use the directions on this page and the Advanced search bar at the top of the page.
Congressional Bills on Govinfo
Congressional bills are legislative proposals from the House of Representatives and Senate within the United States Congress. There are eight different types of bills. There are numerous different bill versions that track a bill through the legislative process from introduction through passage by both chambers (enrolled version). All final published bill versions are available from GPO. More about this collection at https://www.govinfo.gov/help/bills#about.

Congress and the Nation, 2013-2016. volume XIV : Politics and Policy in the 113th and 114th Congresses
ISBN: 1544350651
Congress and the Nation 2017-2020, Volume XV by David Hosansky (Editor)
ISBN: 1071855212

Publication Date: 2023

Congress and the Nation 2017-2020, Vol. XV is organized into 14 policy-centered chapters (economy, homeland security [since vol. XI], foreign policy, defense policy, energy and environment, health, etc.) and two chapters that cover matters internal to Congress and the presidential administration. The policy chapters cover the major legislative activities in the 115th and 116th Congresses.