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Fall 2009
Graphical Bills: Bill Tracking at a Glance
This legislative research tool shows the evolution of a federal bill in a user-friendly diagram.
Why do bill tracking and legislative history research have to be so darn convoluted? A single piece of legislation might have a half-dozen (or more) bill versions. It might also have more than a hundred Congressional Record documents, reports, presidential messages, and other legislative history documents—and not all related to the same bill version. Even online, you might spend hours trying to wrap your mind around the latest legislation.
West's new alternative: We draw you a picture.
Graphical Bills is the recently released legislative research tool that shows the evolution of a federal bill in a user-friendly diagram. This diagram contains icons for each of the bill versions, as well as icons for each legislative history document type and for individual documents. Lines lead your eye from a bill version to the types of documents related to that bill version, and then to the individual documents within a document type.
You don't have to spend time searching databases or determining where in the process a specific document was created. Graphical Bills is ideal for monitoring proposed legislation on issues that may affect your clients, as well as for legislative history research.
To view a document in the diagram, just click (or double-click) its icon. For a link to the last document created, click Last Action in the left frame. You can even use the filtering feature to hide the legislative history document types you're not interested in. For added convenience, you can drag your pointer to move the graphical display.
To access Graphical Bills, click Graphical Bills, when available, in the left frame of a displayed bill. To view a list of the bill versions and legislative history in text view, click Text Version of Graphical View at the top of the Graphical Bills diagram.