Shift #28 - Congress.gov Webinar
Thursday, June 20, 2024 | 1-2 pm CST/2-3 pm EST (1 hr)
This was an interesting webinar to attend. I've never searched for things on Congress.gov so I learned a lot. The website has adaptive system so it can fit whatever device you're using. A lot of work Congress is done in committees. There are committee profile pages we can view. An example of this is the "House Agriculture Committee" with a link to their schedule, live and archived video of hearings and meetings (you can get weekly alerts for these). We also viewed lists of committee memberships. The host walked us through an exercise to find a bill. Most viewed bills can be found the under search box, you can also view bill searches and lists (you can view by sponsors). To do so, you would choose first letter of rep's last name to find sponsor (amendments, bills and if they're the original sponsor or where they withdrew their sponsorship). The U.S. Code - federal legislation - is listed by subject. You can also see the status table of appropriations (like tracking down appropriations legislation) and when you do this, you will see a table with the information on continuing resolutions, supplements, and budget resolutions.
We also learned that Library of Congress reports are available through congress.gov. These are done by the Congressional Research Service, with all kinds of topics, often related to law and even science. The CRS provides objective, nonpartisan research for Congress. There are also legal reports that the public can view, mainly on foreign, comparative and international law. We also learned about the Constitution Annotated which is done by the CRS. It takes a constitutional provision and adds a quick summary of Supreme Court decisions that have interpreted it, along with footnotes (to access full text, authority sources). Lastly, we learned how to access Congress member profile pages, which includes their contact info, party, what part of Congress they serve in (house or senate), committee assignments, and biography. We can even get an alert for whichever person we're interested in, for any laws they are sponsoring.
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