Congressional Record
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The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when Congress is in session. It is similar to the Hansards that report parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government.
The Congressional Record consists of four sections: the Daily Digest, the House section, the Senate section, and the Extensions of Remarks. At the back of each daily issue is the Daily Digest, which summarizes the day's floor and committee activities and serves as a table of contents for each issue. The House and Senate sections contain proceedings for the separate chambers of Congress. Finally, the Extension of Remarks includes tributes, statements, and other information that supplements statements made on the Congressional floor.
That portion of the Congressional Record entitled "Extensions of Remarks" contains speeches, tributes and other extraneous words that were not actually uttered during open proceedings of the full Senate or of the full House of Representatives. In years past, this particular portion of the Congressional Record has been called the "Appendix." While Members of either body may insert material into the Extensions of Remarks portion of the Record, Senators rarely do so. The overwhelming majority of what is found there is entered at the request of Members of the House of Representatives.
By custom and rules of each House, Members also frequently "revise and extend" the remarks they actually made on the floor before the debates are published in the Congressional Record. Therefore, for many years, speeches that were not actually delivered in Congress appeared in the Record, including in the sections purporting to be verbatim reports of debates. In recent years, however, these revised remarks have been printed in a typeface discernably different from that used to report words actually spoken by Members.
History
The Congressional Record was first published in 1873. Prior to this, proceedings, roll calls, debates, and other records were recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789–1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824–1837), or the Congressional Globe (1833–1873). A digital collection (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html) of these historical volumes is being prepared by the United States Library of Congress.
External links
- Congressional Record (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/)