Federal Legislative History Research

Often, different versions of the same bill progress through the House and Senate independently. The bicameral requirement mandates that both chambers agree on an identical version before it can become law. To resolve differences between complex versions, Congress may establish a conference committee. This committee, composed of leaders from both chambers, collaborates to craft a new, compromise version that incorporates elements from each of the previous versions.

Conference report: Conference reports, much like committee reports, can be extremely useful in determining legislative intent. Conference reports are generated during the conference committee markup session and generally include a detailed, line-by-line analysis of the bill.

• Because Congress creates conference reports late in the publication process, they can be especially useful in determining legislative intent about final language decisions for bills.
• Conference reports are issued as House Reports, with the committee as the Committee of Conference. You will find that often, databases store conference reports in the same location as committee reports.

New bill drafts: If a conference committee decides to create an entirely new bill, that bill draft often retains language the committee cherry-picked from the different bills. Compare the differences between the bill versions for a better understanding of congressional intent.

Conference reports:

• Congress.gov: 1995 to the present; coverage may not be complete, and there may be some coverage extending beyond these dates
  • Locate the bill in Congress.gov > select “actions” from the navigation bar > filter by “all actions” > if a conference report exists, it will be labeled “Conference report filed with a link to the report”
• Govinfo.gov: 1995 to the present
  • Govinfo.gov Advanced Search > Refine by Collection “Committee Reports”

New bill drafts:

• Congress.gov: provides the full text of bills from 1993 to the present and metadata from 1973 to the present
  • Locate the bill in congress.gov > select “text” from the navigation bar > use the dropdown menu to download the different bill versions.
• Govinfo.gov: provides the full text of bills from 1993 to the present. You can search by bill number, date, committee, or author.
  • Govinfo.gov Advanced Search > Refine by Collection “Bills”