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How Congress funds the government, in plain English: the appropriations process, continuing resolutions, shutdowns, reconciliation, and every spending bill we track — sourced from bill text.

The rules Congress actually plays by, in plain English: how a bill becomes law, suspension of the rules, discharge petitions, the filibuster, cloture, vetoes, and how votes are recorded.

LegislationPatch tracks U.S. federal legislation and translates bill text into plain English — bill text and status from the Congress.gov API, floor statements from the Congressional Record on GovInfo, roll calls from the House Clerk and the Senate.

Where our data comes from, how we read a bill, the patch notes format, what we deliberately don't do, and the limits of our analysis.

Federal legislation is publicly available — but functionally inaccessible. The gap between availability and accessibility has real political consequences.

Federal bills follow a predictable structure. This guide explains each part — the enacting clause, section numbering, amendment language, and how to find what actually changed.

Every step from the hopper to the presidential pen, checked against the rules that define it — including the two routes to the House floor that need no rule from the Rules Committee, and what budget reconciliation actually limits.

Congress divides its work among more than 200 committees and subcommittees, and almost every measure stops at one. What a committee is, the four types, and how a bill moves through one.

The official record of House and Senate proceedings, published since 1873. What its four sections contain, what “revise and extend” actually permits, how much weight courts give a floor statement, and what our own quote stores do and do not record.

A bill's stage says which steps it has completed, not how likely it is to finish. What each stage is under the House rules, the enrollment statutes and Article I — and what the stage and likelihood on a LegislationPatch bill card do and do not mean.

H.R. 7296 would require documentary proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote in federal elections. Still in committee as of August 2026, but its text has been attached to two other bills; distinct from the SAVE Act, H.R. 22.

S. 1748 would impose a duty of care on online platforms used by minors. The Senate Commerce Committee ordered it reported with a substitute that has not been published; a predecessor package passed the Senate 91-3 in July 2024.

H.R. 8800, the FY2027 defense authorization bill, passed the House 216-212 on July 22, 2026, after a second rule cleared the way for it 214-211.

S. 2296, the FY2026 defense authorization bill, passed the Senate 77-20 on October 9, 2025 and was held at the desk in the House. It never became law: the FY2026 NDAA was enacted through a different vehicle, S. 1071, as Public Law 119-60.

H.R. 6509 would tighten federal oversight of drug compounding and set new limits on compounded copies of commercially available drugs. Still in committee as of August 2026, but the related Senate bill is on the Senate calendar.

Title VII of FISA, which carries Section 702, was set to be repealed on June 12, 2026 after the House rejected a third stop-gap 198 to 218. Every 2026 measure tracked - what each one changed, how each vote went, and what the statute says about collection already under way.

S. 1884, signed April 13, 2026, bars laches and other passage-of-time and non-merits defenses in Holocaust art restitution claims and lifts the 2016 Act filing deadline.

H.R. 7148 became Public Law 119-75 on February 3, 2026, carrying five of the twelve annual appropriations acts for fiscal year 2026 — days after a lapse in appropriations its own text records.

S. 3971 became Public Law 119-83 on April 13, 2026, extending SBIR and STTR to September 30, 2031 and making a connection to any of eight named federal watchlists a ground for denying an application.

H.J.Res. 140 became Public Law 119-85 on April 27, 2026, voiding Public Land Order 7917 and reopening 225,504 acres of Superior National Forest to mineral and geothermal leasing.

H.R. 1346 would extend the Clean Air Act ethanol vapor-pressure allowance from E10 to E15, and separately rewrites how the Renewable Fuel Standard applies to small refiners.

H.R. 2319 would direct HHS to conduct an interagency review of lung cancer research gaps for women and underserved populations and report findings to Congress.

H.R. 6387 passed the House 220-198 on April 22, 2026 and now sits in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. It would give EPA 18 months to propose revisions to its Clean Air Act exceptional events regulations and would run a second category, actions to mitigate wildfire risk, alongside exceptional events throughout section 319(b).

The complete roster of 119th Congress bills in our database on one page — every signed law, chamber passage, and failed vote, plus the funding and FISA deadlines to watch.

The sunset clause on FISA Title VII has been moved by six enacted laws and deferred once since 2008. Every date it has carried, the law that set each one, and the day that law was enacted.

The Congressional Budget Act tells the CBO exactly what a cost estimate must contain, over what horizon, and against what baseline. What the statute requires, and what CBO does and does not price.

A filibuster is any tactic that keeps a Senate measure from coming to a vote. Cloture under Rule XXII is the only rule that can end debate, and it carries three different thresholds.

A government shutdown follows a funding gap. What the Antideficiency Act requires, which functions are excepted rather than essential, who decides what stops, and how long the gaps have actually lasted.

Reconciliation limits Senate debate time, so cloture is never needed to reach a final vote. How the directives work, what the Byrd rule bars, and which laws lost their short titles to it.

The House Rules Committee writes the resolution that sets how long a bill is debated and which amendments may be offered. Its majority members are nominated by the Speaker.

The President can reject legislation by returning it with objections. Congress can override with a two-thirds majority — a threshold that's rarely achieved.

A continuing resolution temporarily funds the government when regular appropriations haven't passed. Here's how CRs work and why they've become the default mode of federal budgeting.

Twelve annual appropriations bills fund the operations of most federal agencies, one per Appropriations subcommittee. All twelve have been enacted before the fiscal year started four times since FY1977, most recently for FY1997.

Cloture is the only Senate rule that can end debate without rejecting the matter being debated. Rule XXII sets three thresholds, not one, and a post-cloture time cap that can only be increased.

Congressional oversight is Congress's power to investigate, subpoena, and review executive branch conduct. Here's what tools Congress has and what its limits are.

Signing statements explain how the President will interpret a new law and sometimes signal which provisions won't be enforced. Here's their legal status and history.

Party leaders and other senators propound unanimous consent requests every day the Senate is in session. A simple request and a negotiated agreement are two different things, and one objection defeats either.

A pocket veto occurs when the President takes no action on a bill and Congress adjourns before the 10-day period expires. It is not subject to the override process — and which adjournments produce one is still disputed.

Not everything Congress passes is a bill. Joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions, and simple resolutions each carry different legal weight and serve different purposes.

Every measure Congress numbers carries a prefix that signals its type and whether it can become law. A legend for all eight measure types and how the numbers get assigned.

A voice vote, a division vote and unanimous consent all leave no record of who voted. What each method is, the House thresholds for a recorded vote — 44 on the floor, 25 in the Committee of the Whole — and what "agreed to by voice vote" means for the public record.

The Congressional Review Act lets Congress overturn a federal agency rule through a joint resolution of disapproval, using an expedited Senate procedure that cannot be filibustered.

A discharge petition lets 218 House members force a bill out of committee and onto the floor without the committee or the leadership agreeing. How the threshold works and how often it succeeds.

The Impoundment Control Act sets the rules for when the executive can withhold appropriated funds — rescissions, deferrals, the 45-day clock, the GAO's role, and the disputed pocket rescission.

Suspension of the rules lets the House pass a bill with 40 minutes of debate, no amendments, and a two-thirds vote of the Members voting. What House Rule XV says, which days it is allowed, and what changed in the 119th Congress.

An omnibus carries several of the twelve annual appropriations bills in one measure, a minibus carries only some of them, and a continuing resolution carries none. What the terms mean, how the divisions work, and which bills in our database are which.

Every member quote is verbatim from the Congressional Record on GovInfo, or it is discarded. Here is the extraction process, the speaker-matching rules, and what provenance each of our two quote stores actually keeps.

Vote data comes directly from the House Clerk and Senate official records, matched to members by bioguide ID in the House and by surname and state in the Senate, with crossover detection on close-margin votes.

How the site is structured so any claim on it can be traced back to its source — verbatim floor quotes, schema.org markup on every article and bill page, and the bill version an analysis was actually written against.

No editorial spin is easy to say and harder to execute. Here's what it means in practice — what we describe, what we don't, and where the line sits between neutral description and political framing.