BILLS

A proposed piece of legislation is called a bill. It may be introduced in either the House of Representatives or the Senate and is numbered sequentially during each 2-year session of Congress. The first bill introduced in the Senate during a session is designated S.1; likewise, the first bill introduced in the House is labeled H.R. 1.   About 10,000 bills are introduced during each Congress, but very few will go on to become laws.

After a bill is passed in one chamber, it is sent to the other chamber for consideration. A bill must be approved in identical form by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, or it cannot be sent to the President for signature.

It is important to note that a bill that is not passed during a specific Congress (e.g., 106^th Congress) does not carry over to the next Congress (e.g., 107^th Congress).   If the sponsors of failed legislation want the next Congress to consider it, the sponsors must submit the measure in the form of a new bill.   A measure resubmitted in a new Congress gets a new bill number.   When looking at a statute's legislative history, it is important to note different submissions of a bill to different Congresses, and that comparing the original text of a bill with subsequent amendments, as well as with the final text of the enacted legislation, may reveal legislative intent.

There are many ways a researcher can locate the text of bills that have been introduced in the House of Representatives and the Senate.   Microfiche copies may be obtained in U.S. GPO Depository libraries (such as the Downtown Campus Library, 6th Floor microfiche cabinets). The full texts of bills are sometimes printed in the Congressional Record (KF 35.C65, 9^th Floor) for the day the bill was introduced.  But the best source by far for finding full texts of pending and recently enacted bills is Thomas, a service of the Library of Congress.  Thomas contains summaries and status reports for all bills dating back to the 93rd Congress (1973 forward), and full texts of bills from the 101^st Congress forward (1989 - present) .

Many bills are available online in the following sources: