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Researching Legislation

Researching Legislation. Count Us IN 2014 Friday January 31. If you want to look up federal legislation, Congress.gov is the official place to do it. The search box on the front page allows you to put in a bill number or a word or phrase, such as the subject of a bill.

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Researching Legislation

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  1. Researching Legislation Count Us IN 2014 Friday January 31

  2. If you want to look up federal legislation, Congress.gov is the official place to do it. The search box on the front page allows you to put in a bill number or a word or phrase, such as the subject of a bill. If you want to search for a house bill, enter “HR” and the number. If you want to search for a senate bill, enter “S” and the number. If you want to search by a word or phrase, such as “healthcare” or “Social Security”, you can just enter your word or phrase and it will search every part of the bill. However, you can also use some little tricks to specify where your word or phrase appears in the document.

  3. Congress.gov search tricks Title: popularTitle:"healthcare" Bill summary: billSummary:"healthcare” Bill text: billText:"healthcare" Latest actions: latestAction:"passed Senate“

  4. Individual Bills After you complete a search, you can look at individual bills.

  5. CBO Cost Estimates • How expensive a bill could be over 10 years • How the bill will be funded. • Estimates not perfect • CBO tends to underestimate cost of bills and overestimate the savings from cuts. •  “Cliff’s Notes” for longer bills • Also try sponsor’s website!

  6. You can also use the big search box to look up members of Congress. Click the drop down and select “members”, and then search for, for example, Senator Dan Coats. Enter his name and click on “Dan Coats” in the search results.

  7. Congress.gov profile pages include years served, website and telephone number, bills sponsored or co-sponsored, committee memberships, and more.

  8. Above the search box is a link to The Legislative Process. This section is useful if it’s been a while since you’ve had a civics class. It offers a brief review of how a bill becomes a law, in text and video format.

  9. House and Senate links • Calendars for upcoming bills and votes • House and Senate floor activities • Upcoming committee hearings

  10. IGA.IN.Gov

  11. To browse current legislation, click “legislation” and then “bills”. This gets you the big list of every bill in the session. If you want to narrow it down to a specific bill number or subject, click on “Search for Bills”. You can also browse by subject, or, if you want to see what your representatives are doing, you can browse by legislator.

  12. Individual Bills

  13. Individual Bills

  14. Latest version – This is the full text of the bill. It pops up in a pdf viewer. Use magnifying glass to search and zoom. Latest fiscal note – This is similar to the CBO report. The Legislative Services Agency analyzes the expenditures related to the bill. Like the CBO reports, you might find that it makes the bill easier to understand.

  15. Bill Actions – Where the bill is in the legislative process.

  16. Nonpartisan • Concise bill summaries • Connect with other advocates • Fifth Freedom alerts • Contact your legislator

  17. Whenever Congress passes a new law, federal agencies actually have to write the rules that enact and enforce it. • Corn syrup ban would need FDA regulations • “Notice of proposed rulemaking” and public comments • Hardly ever read, but just as important as new legislation!

  18. Rule makers people with disabilities might be interested in: • Department of Justice is in charge of enforcing the accessibility requirements in the Americans with Disabilities Act • Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services publish rules related to healthcare • FCC makes regulations about closed captioning, accessible communications devices, and other issues of interest to people with disabilities • FAA makes regulations about accessibility requirements for airplanes and service animals in air travel

  19. Narrow search results: • By publication date • By type • By agency • Under “Type”, click “Proposed rule” (regulations), then “Newest” to look for proposed rules that are still open for comments.

  20. Your name and comment will be publically available, so don’t say anything you don’t want everyone to be able to read!

  21. Other sites to check out: • http://www.opencongress.org/ • http://openstates.org/in/ • https://www.govtrack.us/ • https://www.govtrack.us/states/in

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