The ''Congressional Record'' is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...

, published by the

United States Government Publishing Office The United States Government Publishing Office (USGPO or GPO; formerly the United States Government Printing Office) is an agency of the legislative branch of the United States Federal government. The office produces and distributes informatio ...

and issued when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record Index is updated daily online and published monthly. At the end of a session of Congress, the daily editions are compiled in bound volumes constituting the permanent edition
Chapter 9 of Title 44 of the United States Code
authorizes publication of the ''Congressional Record''. The ''Congressional Record'' consists of four sections: the

House A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air cond ...

section, the

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

section, the Extensions of Remarks, and, since the 1940s, the Daily Digest. At the back of each daily issue is the Daily Digest, which summarizes the day's floor and committee activities and serves as a table of contents for each issue. The House and Senate sections contain proceedings for the separate chambers of Congress. A section of the ''Congressional Record'' titled ''Extensions of Remarks'' contains speeches, tributes and other extraneous words that were not uttered during open proceedings of the full Senate or of the full House of Representatives. Witnesses in committee hearings are often asked to submit their complete testimony "for the record" and only deliver a summary of it in person. The full statement will then appear in a printed volume of the hearing identified as "Statements for the Record". In years past, this particular section of the ''Congressional Record'' was called the "Appendix". While members of either body may insert material into Extensions of Remarks, Senators rarely do so. The overwhelming majority of what is found there is entered at the request of Members of the House of Representatives. From a legal standpoint, most materials in the ''Congressional Record'' are classified as secondary authority, as part of a statute's

legislative history Legislative history includes any of various materials generated in the course of creating legislation, such as committee reports, analysis by legislative counsel, committee hearings, floor debates, and histories of actions taken. Legislative hi ...

. By custom and rules of each house, members also frequently "revise and extend" their remarks made on the floor before the debates are published in the ''Congressional Record''. Therefore, for many years, speeches that were not delivered in Congress appeared in the ''Congressional Record'', including in the sections purporting to be verbatim reports of debates. In recent years, however, these revised remarks have been preceded by a "bullet" symbol or, more recently and currently, printed in a

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discernibly different from that used to report words spoken by members. The ''Congressional Record'' is publicly available for records before 1875 via the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

' American Memory Century of Lawmaking website, and since 1989 via

Congress.gov Congress.gov is the online database of United States Congress legislative information. Congress.gov is a joint project of the Library of Congress, the House, the Senate and the Government Publishing Office. Congress.gov was in beta in 2012, a ...

(which replaced the

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database in 2016). Thanks to a partnership between GPO and the Library of Congress, digital versions of the bound editions are available on govinfo.gov for 1873 to 2001 (Volumes 1-147) and 2005 to 2015 (Volumes 151-161). Govinfo.gov also provides access to digital versions of the daily edition from 1994 (Volume 140) to the present.

History

The

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, in Article I, Section 5, requires Congress to keep a journal of its proceedings, although the House and Senate Journals are separate publications from the ''Congressional Record'', and include only a bare record of actions and votes, rather than verbatim texts of the debates. The ''Congressional Record'' was first published in 1873. Prior to this, proceedings, roll calls, debates, and other records were recorded in ''The Annals of Congress'' (formerly known as ''The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States''; 1789–1824), the ''Register of Debates in Congress'' (1824–1837), or the ''Congressional Globe'' (1833–1873). A digital collection of these historical volumes is now available online via the Library of Congress.

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History

See also

References

External links