Congress

Congress - Quick Links
Introduction
Tracking
Vote Entering
Congressional Summary Writing

Congress is the Key Votes Department's most viewed and widely read output. Readers tend to gravitate towards knowing what the federal government is up to and visit our National Key Votes page more frequently than our State Key Votes pages. This page details the slight differences between Congressional work and states. It also outlines the unique functions and tasks involved with Congress. You can access this page through the main Key Votes wiki page, under Congress Guide. Use the links in the table of contents to jump down to any section, and click the header name to jump back up to the table of contents.

Introduction


Overview of the Process

Vote Smart staff are solely responsible for many of the tasks that related to Congressional work. One staff member will always be responsible for Congressional tracking, vote entering, delegating summary work, and for knowing the ins-and-outs of Congress. Though Congress requires a quick turnaround on our end from the moment the vote takes place to having a live Vote Smart summary, there is a heightened responsibility amongst both the staff member in charge of Congress and all Congressional writers to be as accurate, nonpartisan, and concise as possible when working on anything relating to Congress.

Deadlines & Expectations

Because of the elevated online readership with Congress, we are expected to expedite ALL of the work related to Congress. This includes tracking, entering votes, and summarizing Key Votes. The Key Votes Department has established the following deadlines for Congressional work:
The actual ability of staff to get Congressional summaries live to the website will likely be dependent on whether there are interns or not. Regardless, the staff member in charge of Congress is responsible for making sure these deadlines are met.

Tracking

Tracking Congress utilizes an almost opposite procedure than state legislatures: first, voting records are tracked and only after making a decision that a vote merits a more detailed look do we locate press. This is so that no vote ever goes unseen by staff. Because greater emphasis is placed on Congressional work in the Key Votes Department, the primary Congress tracker is responsible for checking this website http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/index.asp and this https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_115_2.htm website every day to see if any full chamber votes have occurred. For a more detailed guide on where to find the relevant information on these sites, visit the Tracking Senate Guide and the Tracking House Guide.

Congress Schedules

Being aware of Congressional schedules is of great assistance for efficiently tracking Congress. Checking the schedule prevents you from spending unnecessary time checking votes when none have occurred. The House Calendar for each session can be found on House Clerk website or through a simple web search. In the Senate the two party leaders are responsible for creating the Calendar for each session.

It is not rare for Congress to take 1 or more weeks off in any given month, so the Congress tracker should expect an occasional break from tracking.

Finding Key Votes

To track, you first want to search through all main passage stage for bills. This means that at this point you want to skip all amendment votes, consideration votes, and others. Click on these main passage votes and assess whether two criteria are met:

Note that the House produces far more Key Votes than the Senate and the Senate votes far more on nominations than on legislation. However, this is not to say that you can't locate legislation and votes through major media outlets or Google.

Searching for Press

After locating a potential Key Vote, search for press coverage of the legislation. The best way to do this is to perform a Google news search. Most votes will have press coverage within a day or so.

Effective search terms can be the bill number (ex: "HR 5710," "S 380"), the shorthand title given to the bill by its authors (ex: "Patriot Act"), or the chamber in which the vote occurred coupled with terms that describe the subject of the bill that was voted on (ex: "house financial regulation," "senate health care," etc.). You can also peruse specific news sources that you think may have information on the Congressional legislation in question, such as Politico, The Hill, etc. If you are able to find any news articles about that particular vote or about the piece of legislation in general, compile them into a press file and bring the vote up at the next selection meeting. Note about press: you are likely to find a couple of press articles for every vote that comes out of Congress because it's Congress. If it should be a Key Vote there will likely be a greater number of articles. Sometimes you will come across state or local news articles. These can be more useful than you think as they provide local insight into particular provisions of the bill. It is often appropriate to include these in the press file.

Unlike state votes, you should enter a Congressional vote into Admin immediately after selecting it. The vote will be discussed at the next selection meeting. If it is selected officially as a Key Vote you can then write the summary.

Selecting Floor Amendments

Amendments will be selected most often for the following reasons:
(1) A major issue is being covered
(2) The amendment replaces a large portion of the bill text
(3) The vote is extremely close or extremely partisan
(4) There is significant press coverage of the amendment

If a bill we are selecting has been heavily amended, you should look through those amendments to see if any merit selection in and of themselves. For amendments the press burden is significantly lower. We can select an amendment if we find at least one article on the amendment itself.

Senate Nominations

We will select most nominations for cabinet level positions. If there is significant press coverage, including questions regarding the person's qualifications, we will also select that nomination. Nominations being with the prefix “PN” and the president will be the sponsor.

Vote Entering

After selecting a potential Key Vote the staff member in charge should immediately release the voting records and synopsis live to the website. If the vote is not selected at the selection meeting the vote can be unreleased and the entry deleted.

The following lists the data fields you will enter during any vote entry. This is just an introduction to Admin. The more in-depth Guide follows.
Use this wiki page to automatically import voting records into Admin. This is possible because of the Roll Call Number. Once imported, you will have to complete some steps in the "View Votes/Actions" page before moving on.
After releasing the vote the staff member in charge should typically wait until after the selection meeting to continue to the summary writing stage. There will be certain votes that can be worked on before the selection meeting because we are almost certain to select them. Be sure to enter the vote information on the selection spreadsheet.

Amendment Votes

The main differences between amendments and legislation are with the bill number and sponsors and sosponsors listing. Titles are not provided by congress.gov so we will create a Vote Smart title for them. Below is an overview of some differences when entering amendment votes, but go to General Amendment Votes and CongressionalAmendmentVotes for more detailed information.

Bill Number
Congressional amendments must be prefaced by "S" or "H" and then "Amdt [NUMBER]" to indicate the chamber (ex: S Amdt 4326 to S Amdt 4301 to HR 4213). This is required for web importation.

Parent Bill
When entering an amendment vote the parent bill must be selected from the drop down menu. However, only bills that have an admin entry are listed in the parent bill drop-down menu. It's not uncommon for us to select an amendment vote but not a vote on the parent bill. In this case you are not required to list a parent bill. However, you should seriously consider selecting the parent bill. Here's an example of parent bill information:

Parent Bill Information

Sometimes, after hitting the save button at the top of the Admin page for that Key Vote, the selected parent bill will disappear. Try assigning the parent bill to it one more time and hitting save again and it should stick.

Sponsors and Cosponsors
When identifying the sponsor(s) of the amendment, remember that its only the sponsor(s) of the individual amendment, and not that of the parent bill. Congress does have cosponsors of amendments, but it's extremely rare for a state to assign cosponsors to amendments:

source: imgur.com




Public Law and URL Admin Fields

There are two fields at the top portion of an Admin Key Vote page that are specific to Congressional legislation: Public Law and URL. The Public Law will only be utilized if the president signs an existing Key Vote into law. Refer to this wiki page for more information. The URL field will be automatically populated once you have entered in basic bill information in Admin. This URL is used by Admin to find the bill texts link and the voting records.

Errors in Importing Votes

Though the automated vote entry system for Congress has been in place for a while, it is generally the case that the automated voting record retrieval process produces errors. Be careful to put too much assurance in what this automated system can produce and to always be aware of the chance of error. The following lists for the House and Senate detail those members of Congress who have, at one time or another, been erroneously inserted in Admin or left out completely.

House:

Finding Existing Law


United States Code

Federal Register

Public Laws

Helpful Hints


Status Update Resources

Congress should be given a heightened awareness when it comes to status updates. Though state status updates are completed on a quarterly basis, Congress status updates should be covered ASAP. When the president signs the bill we should immediately be covering it. When possible this also applies to all stages of any Congressional bill we select. The only exception is for Amendment votes where the lifespan of the bill internally begins and ends with that singular vote.

The staff member in charge of Congress in encouraged to utilize outside resources like GovTrack to help track status changes. Once subscribed, this organization will email you any updates that have occurred including updates to sponsorships, major floor votes, referred to committee statuses, and presidential actions. These emails will make it much easier to keep up with each bill's status changes. Congressional bills are still required to go through the same quarterly status update check as state bills. Be sure to click the "All Actions" option in congress.gov as opposed to only the "Major Actions." Within the "All Actions" page you will find referred to committee statuses if any are available.

Vetoes

Presidential vetoes are generally easy to track as any veto coming from the Executive Branch will receive plenty of press. Staff should upload a pdf document for the enrolled Bill Text as opposed to relying on the link to Congress.gov as is the case with Congressional summaries. Unlike gubernatorial vetoes, veto titles will be the official title as provided by congress.gov. Note that Presidential vetoes will only be in regular and pocket veto form. Line-item vetoes have been a long sought-after tool for Presidents; President Clinton did receive Congressional authority in 1997 to utilize a Line-Item veto before being deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1998. Also note that the president is given 10 days after a bill's enrollment to sign or veto the bill.

Federal/Presidential Veto Link:
  • Under the "Stage in Legislative Process" menu, select "Vetoed by President" and perform the search.
  • This option will not appear if no vetoes have yet been issued for the current session.
  • Similarly, you can see which legislation has been vetoed by visiting the White House website or the Senate website


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