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

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...

, 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 informati ...

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 The United States Code (formally The Code of Laws of the United States of America) is the official Codification (law), codification of the general and permanent Law of the United States#Federal law, federal statutes of the United States. It ...

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 c ...

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 his ...

. 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 a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

' American Memory Century of Lawmaking website, and since 1989 via Congress.gov (which replaced the THOMAS 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

In early United States history, there was no record of Congressional debates. The contemporary British Parliament from which Congress drew its tradition was a highly secretive body, and publishing parliamentary proceedings in Britain did not become legal until 1771. The

Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

, in Article I, Section 5, requires Congress to keep a journal of its proceedings, but both the '' House Journal'' and the '' Senate Journal'' include only a bare record of actions and votes rather than records of debates. In the first twenty years, Congress made frequent use of secret sessions. Beginning with the War of 1812, public sessions became commonplace. In the early 1800s, political reporting was dominated by ''

National Intelligencer The ''National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser'' was a newspaper published in Washington, D.C., from October 30, 1800 until 1870. It was the first newspaper published in the District, which was founded in 1790. It was originally a tri ...

,'' the first newspaper of Washington, D.C. Newspapers with reporters in the chamber regularly published floor statements in their reports. Joseph Gales and

William Seaton William Winston Seaton (January 11, 1785 – June 16, 1866) was an American journalist and the thirteenth mayor of Washington, D.C. Life William Winston Seaton was born in King William County, Virginia. His mother's maiden name was Winston and ...

, the editors of the ''Intelligencer'', became regular fixtures in the House and Senate chambers. In 1824, Gales and Seaton began publishing the ''Register of Debates'', the first series of publications containing congressional debates. The ''Register of Debates'' contains summaries of "leading debates and incidents" of the period rather than a verbatim debate transcript. From 1834 to 1856, Gale and Seaton retroactively compiled the ''Annals of Congress'', covering congressional debates from 1789 to 1824 using primarily newspaper accounts. When Andrew Jackson's Democrats came into power in congress around 1830, Gales and Seaton's popularity declined due to their differing views with the administration. The new printing partnership of Francis Preston Blair and John Cook Rives founded the ''Congressional Globe'' in 1833 with President Jackson's support. In 1837, ''Register of Debates'' ceased publication. In 1851, the ''Congressional Globe'' began publishing near-verbatim reports of debates thanks to the publication's heavy use of stenographers. The ''Congressional Record'' was first published in 1873.

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History

See also

References

External links