Results from a Word/Phrase Search
When you do a word/phrase search in the Bill Text query page, the default is to search for the exact words typed into the search box.

Four sets of results are given for an exact-word search in Bill Text:

Bills containing your exact phrase.

Bills containing all your search terms near each other in any order.

Bills containing all your search terms but not near each other.

Bills containing one or more of your search terms.

Results do not overlap. Items which are selected based on containing the exact phrase are not included in the grouping of legislation containing all search terms.

Higher recall precision comes from including additional search terms or a longer phrase. For example, the search

will return a more focused set of results than

Although an exact-word search is the default search in the Bill Text files, you can also do a broader search by selecting the radio button Search for word variants. A search done with the word-variants radio button selected will bring back bills with your exact word, but also bills with variants on the word, including plurals. A search on multiple words with bring back bills with the phrase, or variants of its words, in the same order.

For example, a search on

A search on:

Whether you do an exact-word search or a word-variants search, the InQuery search system will present the first 50 most-relevant items that match the search criteria. Fifty items is the default; you may elect to see more or fewer bills by adjusting the number in the "Maximum Number of Items to Be Returned" box, up to 2,000. If fewer than 50 items match the search criteria, then all of the items will be displayed.

(For an explanation of relevance-ranking in the InQuery search system, see InQuery and Relevance-Ranking.)

Each item represents only ONE VERSION of ONE bill. Not all versions will necessarily be displayed together sequentially, if their language varies enough to alter their relevance-rank. One, two, three, four, five or more versions of the SAME bill may appear in the results set.

Brief Display: Versions of a Bill
As a bill passes through the legislative process, its title, language and content may be altered, sometimes substantially, resulting in different "versions" of the bill. The "brief display" resulting from a bill number search or a word/phrase search includes: the title of the bill, the version of a bill (the text of the bill at a certain stage in legislative process), and the bill number.

The title displayed may be the "short title" of the legislation, if available, or the longer "official title" of the legislation if no short title has been assigned.

Examples of bill versions which may appear are:

Introduced in the House
Reported in the House
Discharged from Committee by the House
House Bill Referred to a Senate Committee
Referred to an Additional House Committee
Engrossed House Amendment
Passed by the House

Introduced in the Senate
Reported in the Senate
Discharged from Committee by the Senate
Senate Bill Referred to a House Committee
Referred to an Additional Senate Committee
Engrossed Senate Amendment
Passed by the Senate
House Appropriations Bill Passed by the House

Enrolled Bill (Sent to President)*

*Through the end of the 104th Congress, this version of the bill is always equivalent to the law text (UNLESS the President should veto or pocket-veto the bill). Even if the President vetoes a bill, Congress has an opportunity to override the veto, which requires a recorded two-thirds vote of those voting in each chamber.

When you select a bill/version from the results list, the full text for that version is displayed -- or, in the case of bills longer than 10,000 bytes (10K), a clickable table of contents will appear. Clicking on or selecting the link of one of the table of contents entries will take you to the full text for that section of the bill.

From the top of the full-text display, you may also link to additional information about the bill:

1. Any additional versions of the bill;
2. References to the bill in the Congressional Record, but only when the bill is referred to by bill number in the Record. Some relevant documents may be missed. If the Congressional Record document does not mention the bill specifically by bill number, e.g., a lengthy debate about bill content or topic, that part of the Record will not be returned.
3. Bill Summary & Status information about the bill, including sponsor, cosponsors, titles, status (floor actions, detailed legislative history), digest (summary), amendments, committees, subjects;
4. An accompanying House and/or Senate Committee Report on the bill, if there is one;
5. A link, for bills longer than 10K, to plain (ASCII) text of the entire bill on the THOMAS FTP site, for downloading to disk. (Use the "Save As" or equivalent capability of your Web browser to save an electronic copy of the entire text of the bill to disk.)

Full-Text and Table of Contents Displays
For shorter bills, selecting the brief display item will link the searcher directly to the full text of the bill. For longer bills, an intermediate table of contents may be displayed rather than a direct link to the full text. Each item in the table of contents display is an entry point into the bill. For example, a typical table of contents display shows:

Beginning
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
SEC. 2. DEFINITIONS.
SEC. 3. APPLICATION OF LAWS.
SEC. 4. OFFICE OF COMPLIANCE.
SEC. 5. STUDY AND REGULATIONS.
SEC. 6. OTHER FUNCTIONS.

The menu link for "Beginning" will display the the full text for the first "chunk" of bill in a size manageable for most Web broswers to handle (10K). When reaching the end of that portion of text, the user may use the Forward link from the navigation menu to see the next "chunk" of text, and so forth. On the table of contents display, each menu item represents an "entry point" into the bill at that particular section.

Other navigation aids such as Item List, Back, Prev Bill, Next Bill and so forth appear on a menu bar on the full-text and table of contents displays. For an explanation of these navigation aids, select the Help link on the navigation menu bar.