usgpo/bill-status

Information about Bill Status XML Bulk Data including the XML User Guide.

bill-status's Issues

Bill Status actions questions

Bill status files like this one contain nearly duplicative actions. For example:

The differences I can see occur in actionCode and sometimes in sourceSystem. Should we expect that a bill might have the same action, but with different actionCodes? Which one is considered canonical? Is one sourceSystem preferable to another?

Thanks!

115th House bills available on congress.gov but not fdsys

The sitemap has no entry for 115hr, though I see congress.gov is up to HR 237 for the new congress.

https://www.gpo.gov/smap/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/sitemapindex.xml

Will these bills be in the 4:00 pm update?

114hr636 not updated after getting a public law number

For HR 636, Congress.gov shows:

Latest Action:  07/15/2016 Became Public Law No: 114-190.  

(The actions detail page isn't working this morning so I can't see the full action history.)

The latest action in the XML is missing that information:

<actionDate>2016-07-14</actionDate>
<text>Presented to President.</text>

After 5 days, OFR still hasn't published the public law number on their website. (How do we get them CC'd on this issue?)

But if Congress.gov knows about it, I would expect it to be in the XML, so I'm flagging that as an issue here.

Co-sponsor issues for a few bills

Hello, for a few of the senate bills there are issues on the co-sponsors tab. Each of them list how many senators have co-sponsored the bill, but when I go to view that tab it says "no cosponsors".

S. 652: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/652/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22s652%22%5D%7D&r=1
S. 623: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/623/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22s623%22%5D%7D&r=1
S. 573: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/573/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22s573%22%5D%7D&r=1
S. 540: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/540/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22s540%22%5D%7D&r=1
S. 544: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/544/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22s544%22%5D%7D&r=1

Missing forward slash in vote URL

The URLs for the vote XML on the Clerk’s website is missing the forward slash between “EVS” and the year.

Incorrect: http://clerk.house.gov/evs2016/roll020.xml
Correct: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2016/roll020.xml

S. 247 has 15 co-sponsors, with "no-cosponsors" listed

Hi, I'm having a problem with co-sponsors for S. 247: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/247/cosponsors.

Under the co-sponsors tab, it says there are 15 co-sponsors but there are none listed and I see the message "No cosponsors."

Site maintenance

We will be performing maintenance activities ‎from 10am to 2pm today. As a result, sitemaps users may notice that values for some existing sitemap entries could change by up to an hour.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Bill was both signed by the president and not signed by the president

H.R. 6297 has conflicting information.

<item>
  <text>Sent to Archivist of the United States unsigned.</text>
  <actionCode>E30000</actionCode>
  <type>President</type>
  <sourceSystem>
    <code>2</code>
    <name>House floor actions</name>
  </sourceSystem>
  <actionDate>2016-12-15</actionDate>
</item>
<item>
  <text>Signed by President.</text>
  <actionCode>E30000</actionCode>
  <type>President</type>
  <sourceSystem>
    <code>9</code>
    <name>Library of Congress</name>
  </sourceSystem>
  <actionDate>2016-12-15</actionDate>
</item>

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/hr/BILLSTATUS-114hr6297.xml

Both can't be true.

Congress.gov only lists "Sent to Archivist of the United States unsigned.".

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/6297/all-actions

This is a pretty serious data error, with constitutional ramifications.

missing actionTime (THOMAS has it)

In BILLSTATUS-114hconres111.xml, and on the corresponding page on Congress.gov, an action item is missing an actionTime that THOMAS has.

The bulk data (no actionTime):

<item>
    <type>Discharge</type>
    <text>Committee on House Administration discharged.</text>
    <sourceSystem>
        <code>2</code>
        <name>House floor actions</name>
    </sourceSystem>
    <committee>
        <systemCode>hsha00</systemCode>
        <name>House Administration Committee</name>
    </committee>
    <actionDate>2016-02-10</actionDate>
    <actionCode>H12300</actionCode>
</item>
<item>
    <type>Committee</type>
    <text>Committee on House Administration discharged.</text>
    <sourceSystem>
        <code>9</code>
        <name>Library of Congress</name>
    </sourceSystem>
    <committee>
        <systemCode>hsha00</systemCode>
        <name>House Administration Committee</name>
    </committee>
    <actionDate>2016-02-10</actionDate>
    <actionCode>5500</actionCode>
</item>

THOMAS (I forget how to permalink):

This isn't really a problem necessarily, but I wanted to flag it in case there's an underlying bug.

Bill cosponsors - possible to add separate elements for party, state and district?

Bill cosponsors listed in bill status files like this one have the cosponsor's state, party and district inside a single attribute:

Would it be possible to have separate attributes for each? Thanks!

missing sponsor information

Some bills are coming up without sponsor info.

One is 114s2874, which has an empty sponsors node:

<sponsors/>

although it has a sponsor on Congress.gov.

Also showing the same issue: s2883, s3160, s3231, s3232, s3278, sres515, sres522, sres532, sres533, and sres543.

XML files should be gzipped

Gzipping the xml files would greatly speed up the ability to deliver them to clients downloading them. Can this be enabled?

sponsor information is being dropped from 114th bills on congress.gov/fdsys xml

For example:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/3205

Sponsor: No Sponsor (Introduced 07/13/2016)

We have found about 20 bills with this condition thus far.

bill is missing sponsor (on Congress.gov too)

S. 414 in the 113th is missing sponsor info:
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/113/s/BILLSTATUS-113s414.xml

Same at:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/414

THOMAS had it whenever I last scraped:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s414

Scheduling Processing Time

From the April 27 presentation, the issue of when the bulk data is processed and updated was raised. Personally, I feel very strongly that the Library should not sacrifice consistency between the bulk data and Congress.gov in order to preserve timeliness. My preference would be to have the data processed more than once a day, and if 4 a.m. is one of the times, then at least one of the other times should be sometime before noon (8 am or 11 am).

I raised the original issue of moving the processing from 4 am because there were discrepancies between the data and Congress.gov as a result, and feel that there must be a balance between timeliness and consistency, not favoring timeliness over consistency.

To Include Bill Version in Bill Status Document

Legislation may be changed or amended as it makes its way through the legislative process. You will sometimes see different bill text versions in the Text tab of a bill record. A list of the different versions are in the link.

Versions are needed for accessing bills the following xml pages:
Bill Summary (In URL)
CONGRESSIONAL BILLS - BULK DATA

Senate Amendment Cosponsors missing in Bill-Status xml

for example, S 2848 Amendment 4997:

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/s/BILLSTATUS-114s2848.xml

on congress.gov Jeff Flake is cosponsor:

https://www.congress.gov/amendment/114th-congress/senate-amendment/4997/cosponsors

In Bill Status I see cosponsor count, but not information on who that cosponsor is:

4997 114 SAMDT 114 2016-12-01T19:31:22Z 1 1 M000303 JOHN MCCAIN R AZ SIDNEY Sen. McCain, John [R-AZ] 114 <title>Water Resources Development Act of 2016</title> 2848 S Senate S Senate 2 2016-09-08 2016-09-08 91000 Floor 9 Library of Congress Senate amendment submitted 1 1 4997 0 2016-09-08T04:00:00Z SAMDT In the nature of a substitute. 114 4979 SAMDT 2016-09-09T09:03:31Z

Floor action identified as President

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/hres/BILLSTATUS-114hres450.xml

I don't believe this is a type=President action.

President On motion to discharge Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: 246 - 177 (Roll no. 569). (consideration: CR H7182) H30841 House floor actions 2 https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-161/house-section/page/H7182 H7182 http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2015/roll569.xml Roll no. 569 2015-10-26

house amendment given senate sponsor in bill-status xml

115 SCONRES 3 coincidentally has both SAMDT 44 and HAMDT 44 as amendments.

In the FDSYS xml most of the metadata for the HAMDT actually belongs to SAMDT 44.

it looks okay on congress.gov: https://www.congress.gov/amendment/115th-congress/house-amendment/44?

FROM:

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/115/sconres/BILLSTATUS-115sconres3.xml

Strike all after the resolving clause and insert the following: SECTION 1. CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2017. (a) Declaration- Congress declares that this resolution is the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2017 and that this resolution sets forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2018 through 2026. ***. 115 44 HAMDT 2017-01-13 15:25:57 On agreeing to the Yarmuth amendment (A001) Failed by recorded vote: 149 - 272 (Roll no. 57). Amendment in the nature of a substitute. 44 SAMDT 2017-01-10T10:17:07Z 2017-02-04T10:13:35Z 0 0 2017-01-09T05:00:00Z Sen. Flake, Jeff [R-AZ] JEFF AZ R FLAKE F000444 115 S <title> A concurrent resolution setting forth the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2017 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2018 through 2026. </title> SCONRES 3 Senate 115 2 2017-01-09 Senate amendment submitted 2017-01-09 Library of Congress 9 Floor 91000 1 1 Senate 0

Garbled action

https://www.congress.gov/amendment/114th-congress/house-amendment/752/actions

11/03/2015 Amendment reported by the House Committee on Welch to the Rules amendment (A001). (consideration: CR H7593-7594; text: CR H7593)

subjects moved around in in 114hr5714 (and others)

In 114hr5714 and three other files, the subjects have moved around and don't match the documented format.

^ should not look anything like that.

More information about the 12/15 meeting?

Hello! Saw the note on your README about the meeting on 12/15. When I called the listed number, those folks didn't know about this event. Do you have more details (specifically, is there a remote participation option)?

Thanks for any information.

Versioning, changelog, notices of updates to the data format

A few related questions:

• Can we assign version numbers to the data format and put those version numbers in the data files so that looking at a file it's possible to tell under what format it was generated?
• A CHANGELOG.md file at the root of this repo would be a great place to list changes to the data format. Here's an example of a CHANGELOG from one of my projects. Now that the documentation is in Markdown we could just look at the diffs, but a CHANGELOG would be clearer and more explicit.
• There should be a system in place for handling backward-incompatible data format changes.... before more backward-incompatible changes are made. And definitely before THOMAS goes off-line.
• How should data users stay informed about data format changes? For now, you could recommend that they 'watch' this repo, and then you can send out announcements just by creating new github issues (since github will email everyone that is watching the repo). That's not ideal for various reasons, but it'll work. A recommendation for how to stay informed should be posted somewhere, e.g. in the README here.

Why to do versioning:

• I might have a local cache of the bill status files and want to know what data format they conform to / were generated under so that I know how to interpret the XML.
• A version number might also be the only way to know if the files being provided by GPO have been updated or not after a data format change. Certain changes might not be evident just from looking at the XML, and one would have to guess based on the file last modification date to know if it was updated post-data-format-update.
• The isByRequest field moved. That was a backward-incompatible change. Anyone that accidentally ingests new files without being aware of the change is likely to then be mis-understanding whether or not bills were introduced by request. A version number inside the XML would solve this so that the data user can be aware when there's a new version that might require updating their application.

How to do versioning:

A date would work well here as a version number. e.g. The 2016-04-27 version would represent the bill status data format as it was on April 27, 2016. The date would be incremented only when the data format actually changes. This gets around deep questions of whether a change should increment a major version number, minor version number, etc etc.

A simple integer (version 201) would also work, as would semantic versioning (1.2.3).

duplicate actions display on congress.gov

I understand that duplicate actions are present in the BillStatus xml. However, there are a couple of bills that have duplicate actions that are displaying on congress.gov and looks like it might be some kind of data anomaly:

For example HR 5937

Date Chamber All Actions
09/29/2016 Became Public Law No: 114-227.
09/29/2016 Became Public Law No: 114-227.
09/29/2016 Signed by President.
09/29/2016 Signed by President.
09/26/2016 House Presented to President.
09/26/2016 House Presented to President.

Also: HR 4721

truncated subcommittee name

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/s/BILLSTATUS-114s189.xml

The subcommittee name appears to be truncated:

and Federal Management Subcommittee

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee ssga00 Senate Referred to 2015-01-20T16:33:00Z Standing Hearings by 2016-02-24T15:34:08Z ssga19 and Federal Management Subcommittee

official title for other

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/hr/BILLSTATUS-114hr5148.xml

has the following official title item:

Official Titles on Other Bill Versions Official Title <title> To amend the Department of Education Organization Act and the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require publication of information relating to religious exemptions to the requirements of title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and for other purposes. </title>

This is the only bill status file for the 114th congress with this title type. Is it a data error?

bills on congress.gov not on fdsys

As of right now, the highwater mark for house bills on FDSYS is BILLSTATUS-114hr6323.xml and the latest introduced bill on congress.gov is H.R.6335

I presume this is caused by the reprocessing, but can you provide a sense of when these bills will be available as FDSYS xml.

bill summary updateDate vs lastSummaryUpdateDate

billSummaries has:

    <updateDate>2013-03-04T05:00:00Z</updateDate>
    <lastSummaryUpdateDate>2013-04-03T20:33:09Z</lastSummaryUpdateDate>

(BILLSTATUS-113s438.xml)

What's the difference in meaning between these nodes? (In this example the dates are different and the bill has just this one summary.)

Relatedly, are the summaries billSummaries in any particular order (oldest to newest, newest to oldest)?

Why does "all actions" display on congress.gov vary

Question more than issue, but I am very curious about the answer.

Sometimes there are 3 columns -- date, chamber and all actions -- and an "Action By: X" string is added on a new line for committee actions:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1004/all-actions?

Sometimes there are 2 columns -- date and all actions -- and every action has an "Action By: X" string that specifies chamber, except for committee actions

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1215/all-actions?

These are both house bills from the current congress

S RES 578 has very little metadata -- no title or text on congress.gov

There are bill text versions on fdsys. Here's the text of the ats version:

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-114sres578ats/html/BILLS-114sres578ats.htm

S.Res. 578 is missing a title

S.Res. 578 doesn't have a title.

This is the case both in the data and on Congress.gov, which also indicates GPO hasn't published text for the resolution yet (it was introduced two months ago).

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-resolution/578
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/sres/BILLSTATUS-114sres578.xml

Truncated action

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-resolution/255/all-actions

05/12/2015-10:25pm Providing for consideration of H.R. 1735, H.R. 36, and

Presumably there should be another bill number after "and"?

amendment info appears to be in the wrong place

In BILLSTATUS-114s754.xml, the info for S.Amdt. 2547 appears to have been generated incorrectly. Amendment top-level elements like sponsors, amendedBill etc. are inside the actionByCounts node:

Bill Summaries: Possible to add committee codes to resolutions that contain changes in committee rosters?

Thinking specifically of House resolutions here (but would be curious about Senate as well). Ideally the summary would have the committee code for any resolutions that involved a member being assigned to or leaving a committee, as well as the type of action. Not sure how this would be address for resolutions that have multiple assignments, but worth talking about.

Bill Summaries: Difference in data between Congress.gov & bulk data

So congress.gov says the House passed this bill on April 18:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/4570

Bill summary XML as of April 19 (mid-afternoon) doesn't have that:

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/hr/BILLSTATUS-114hr4570.xml

Why would they be different?

Missing Amendments on Amendment Tab for H.R. 985, H.R. 725

Hoping this is the right spot to submit this issue--on the amendment tab for H.R. 985 and H.R. 725 it shows the amendments to the bill that were considered, but when I click the "Amendments" tab none are listed.

H.R. 985 (8 amendments): https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/985/amendments?r=1
H.R. 725 (2 amendments): https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/725/amendments?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22hr725%22%5D%7D&r=1

Both bills have the amendments listed and linked with roll call votes under the "Actions" tab on their bill pages.

cosponsor not current in fdsys bill status xml

For example, congress.gov has claire mccaskill as a cosponsor of s375 as of 11/16/2016

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/375/cosponsors?

but she is not included in the xml which is: 2016-11-17T04:04:01.514Z

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/s/BILLSTATUS-114s375.xml

BILLSTATUS-114hconres125.xml -- empty action item

This resolution has an empty action and the display on congress.gov does not seem consistent -- the introduced action in the overview is not listed in all actions:

  <item>
    <actionDate>2016-03-23</actionDate>
    <committee />
    <links />
    <text />
  </item>
  <item>

Is this bad data?

Archive of THOMAS

This probably is not the right place to raise the issue, but I want to suggest that the HTML pages for THOMAS be archived before the website is shut down (in whatever way it is shut down).

A good example is the web harvest performed by the National Archives of Congressional sites (see http://www.webharvest.gov/). It appears the robot.txt directive on THOMAS.gov has prevented the Wayback Machine from archiving THOMAS. At a minimum, we should have a copy of it as it is at its final state, ideally in one that is crawlable.

Missing bill: HJRes 86

This bill is on Congress.gov:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-resolution/86

But not in the bulk data:

https://www.gpo.gov//fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/115/hjres/

cbo cost estimate items duplicated in bill status xml

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/113/hr/BILLSTATUS-113hr1.xml

<title>H.R. 1, Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013</title> 2013-01-17T18:44:00Z http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43853 <title>H.R. 1, Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013</title> 2013-01-17T18:44:00Z https://www.cbo.gov/publication/43853

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/113/hr/BILLSTATUS-113hr2871.xml

<title> H.R. 2871, a Bill to Amend Title 28, United States Code, to Modify the Composition of the Southern Judicial District of Mississippi to Improve Judicial Efficiency, and for Other Purposes </title> 2013-09-24T21:49:21Z http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44615 <title> H.R. 2871, a Bill to Amend Title 28, United States Code, to Modify the Composition of the Southern Judicial District of Mississippi to Improve Judicial Efficiency, and for Other Purposes </title> 2013-09-24T21:49:21Z https://www.cbo.gov/publication/44615

two CR pages for H5356 constitutional authority statement

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/hr/BILLSTATUS-114hr5356.xml

has the following constitutional authority statement:

From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]By Mr. BRADY of Texas:H.R. 5356.Congress has the power to enact this legislation pursuantto the following:Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7: ``The Congress shall havepower . . . to establish Post Offices and Post Roads.'' [PageH1802][Page H3296]

]]>

I don't believe PageH1802 is correct. Is this bad input data?

What is the timing in terms of updating sitemap and bulk data directory/zip?

I am seeing bills in:

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/hr

that are not yet on:

https://www.gpo.gov/smap/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114hr/sitemap.xml

Large quantity of 114th Congress bills updated 10/21 or 10/22

5882 house bills were updated according to the sitemap:

https://www.gpo.gov/smap/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114hr/sitemap.xml

Is it possible to get some details about what information was updated for all of these bills.

Bulk data for HR 131 (114th Congress) contains duplicate co-sponsors

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/hr/BILLSTATUS-114hr131.xml contains duplicate co-sponsors.

For example, Rep. Hanna, Richard L. [R-NY-22] is listed twice, but there are at least 8 or 9 other duplicates.

suggestion: validate using the same importer I do

Little suggestion: Use https://github.com/unitedstates/congress to try parsing the files before you push them into FDSys, so that you know the problems I'm going to file issues about before I file them. :)

GPO Ids for members

Some members appear to have gpoId listed in the bill status XML, but others do not (see, for example, Ryan Zinke in this bill. Is there a reason for this? It's not significant for me, personally, but was curious. Thanks!

Amendment XML elements don't contain bioguide ids

Amendment XML elements are missing the bioguide ID from the amendment sponsor (where there is one). For example: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/114/hr/BILLSTATUS-114hr1314.xml

Can bioguide IDs be added?

TEST title in billStatus for HR 5148

HR 5148 has a TEST display title and the parentTitleType and titleType values for official titles don't match the rest of the bill status corpus. I assume this is a data error?

<title>TEST</title> 2016-11-02T22:43:49Z

and:

<title>To amend the Department of Education Organization Act and the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require publication of information relating to religious exemptions to the requirements of title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and for other purposes.</title> Short Title Other Short Titles <title>Transparency in Taypayer-Funded [sic] Discrimination Act</title> Short Titles as Introduced <title>TEST</title> Override Display Title <title>To amend the Department of Education Organization Act and the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require publication of information relating to religious exemptions to the requirements of title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and for other purposes.</title> Official Title Official Titles on Other Bill Versions <title>To amend the Department of Education Organization Act and the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require publication of information relating to religious exemptions to the requirements of title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and for other purposes.</title> Official Title as Introduced <title>TEST</title> Display Title

actionTime in the old format

BILLSTATUS-113hconres14.xml has actionTimes in the old XX:YY AM/PM format instead of the newer ISO-like format:

<item>
    <actionCode>H38310</actionCode>
    <actionDate>2013-03-06</actionDate>
    <actionTime>12:00PM</actionTime>