Congressional bills are important because any changes in the language may reveal legislative choice and thereby demonstrate legislative intent.
House and Senate Committees hold hearings on matters of general concern and on specific legislation. Committee hearings are technically not part of legislative history since they do not contain Congressional deliberations. Hearings generally contain the views and statements of interested parties, not legislators. They provide background information and are useful sources for understanding why Congress did or did not adopt specific language based upon the testimony of experts.
Committee reports are generally the most important document in a legislative history because they represent the understanding of members of Congress who worked closely with the bill. Reports are published in a numbered series that indicates house, with Congress, and establishes a report number. (ex: H.R. (House of Representatives) Rep. No. 105 (Congress #)-538 (Report #) (1998)).
A bill is eligible for a conference when it has been passed in one house and then amended and passed in another house. A conference committee is made up of Senators and Representatives appointed to work out differences in the amended bill. When Senate and House conferees reach agreement on all or part of an amended bill, they prepare a report making their recommendations to the House and Senate. The report contains a prefatory statement, which must be sufficiently detailed and explicit to inform Congress of the effect of the report on the matters committed to the conference. Each house of Congress must then agree on the recommendations of the conference report for the bill to pass.
Committee prints are the publication of studies conducted by committee staff. Committee prints are not primary legislative history documents because they are not formally adopted by committees. They are valuable in understanding legislation because they can provide background and context for the decisions made by committees.
Congressional debates are generally not as influential as committee reports. Some authority claims that debates are not to be given weight for legislative history purposes, See S & E Contractors v. US, 406 U.S. 1, 13 (note 9) (1973), however when the statements come from the bill's sponsors they are given some weight when the stated intention is to clarify or explain the bill's purpose.
The Congressional Record (CR) is a nearly verbatim transcript published each day either house is in session. CR does not contain hearings or committee reports, but does include the text of some conference committee reports. Each CR contains a daily digest summarizing the day's activities. The digest provides news of bills introduced, reports filed, and measures debated or passed and list of committee meetings held. There is an index to the CR by subject, legislator name, and title of legislation that is published every two weeks which culminates in the bound volume. This index includes history of bills and resolutions table.
Presidential messages, reports, and documents of federal agencies may be of interest when developing a legislative history, but because these are not developed by Congress, they are not considered a primary source of legislative history.
