Congressional Record

Reporters of debate record everything said and done in the House and Senate chambers and publish an edited version of the proceedings the next day in the Congressional Record. Members may edit and revise their remarks and may include full texts in place of the condensed speeches they delivered on the floor. The Record reflects Congress's attitudes and legislative intent, making it the first place to begin any research on Congress and the legislative process.

The Constitution does not require the House and Senate to keep a verbatim, or word-for-word, record, only that they publish journals from time to time. These legislative and executive journals are short minutes of the proceedings. So the Congressional Record is not a legal requirement but something that evolved from the notes that journalists made of the speeches and published in their newspapers. Joseph Gales and William Seaton recorded the debates for their Washington newspaper, the National Intelligencer. In 1824, Gales and Seaton began publishing these as the Register of Debates. They also compiled the speeches of the earliest Congresses in a series called the Annals of Congress. In 1833, Francis Blair and John C. Rives launched a rival publication, the Congressional Globe. Because Gales and Seaton were Whigs and Blair and Rives were Democrats, members of Congress sometimes viewed reporters from their publications as partisans who deliberately distorted congressional speeches. But it was not partisanship so much as primitive stenography and poor acoustics that hobbled the reporters.

Beginning in 1848, Congress put the reporters of debate on its payroll to ensure impartiality. That same year, the new Pitman system of stenography greatly improved the reporters’ accuracy. The Congressional Globe remained a private publication until 1873, when the Government Printing Office took over the project and began publishing the Congressional Record as a government document.

Over time the Congressional Record has undergone many stylistic changes. In addition to their speeches, members are permitted to reprint newspaper and magazine articles and other items that they want their colleagues to read. It is against the rules, however, to reprint editorial cartoons. That rule was made in 1913 after Senator Benjamin Tillman (Democrat-South Carolina) put in the Record a cartoon of a cow being fed by western farmers and milked by eastern financiers.

Remarks that representatives do not actually read on the floor are printed in the “Extensions of Remarks” section at the back of the Record. Senators rarely use this section and instead ask for unanimous consent that their remarks be included in the Record as if they had been delivered on the floor. Such provisions speed up proceedings on the floor while still allowing members to compile a comprehensive record on the issues.

Since 1947, a Daily Digest has appeared at the back of the Congressional Record as a summary and index of floor proceedings and committee business of the day. Once a Congress has ended, the Government Printing Office combines the daily Congressional Records into a fully indexed, permanent edition.

See also Daily Digest; Reporters of debate

Sources

• Donald A. Ritchie, Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991)

Congressional Record, a daily, unofficial publication of the proceedings of the sessions of Congress. The Senate and House journals contain the official records. The Record prints not only the daily actions of each chamber but also a checked stenographic record of all remarks and formal debate. Congress has published this daily account of legislative action and opinion since 1873, before which three separate series of reports served a similar function. These three reports, Annals of Congress (1789–1824), Register of Debates (1824–1837), and Congressional Globe (1834–1873), were privately inspired and privately published with a consequently questionable accuracy.

Bibliography

Amer, Mildred. The Congressional Record: Content, History, and Issues. Washington, D.C.: 1993.

—George C. Robinson/C. W.

A daily publication of the federal government that details the legislative proceedings of Congress.

The Congressional Record began in 1873 and, in 1947, a feature called The Daily Digest was added to briefly highlight the daily legislative activities of each House, committee, and subcommittee.

The text of the Congressional Record is not a verbatim transcript of the statements made on the floor of the Senate or the House of Representatives. After obtaining permission from their respective Houses to do so, members of Congress can revise their speeches prior to publication in the Record and are permitted to extend their comments to include remarks not made on the floor of Congress.

A published account of the votes, speeches, and debates of the United States Congress.

A page from the February 12, 1999 edition of the Congressional Record, published during the impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton.

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 the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks. At the end of a session of Congress, the daily editions are compiled in bound volumes constituting the permanent edition. The Congressional Record is similar to the Hansards that report parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government.

Overview

The Congressional Record consists of four sections: the House section, the Senate section, the Extensions of Remarks, and (since the 1940s) the Daily Digest. 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.

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 section 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, and the overwhelming majority of what is found there is entered at the request of Members of the House of Representatives. From a legal standpoint, most materials in the Congressional Record are classified as secondary authority.

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 preceded by a "bullet" symbol or, more recently and presently, printed in a typeface discernably different from that used to report words actually spoken by Members.

History

The Constitution, in Article 1, Section 5, requires Congress to keep a journal of its proceedings, although the House and Senate Journals are separate publications from the Congressional Record, and include only a record of actions and votes, rather than that verbatim texts of the debates.

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 of these historical volumes is now available online via the Library of Congress.

See also

• Hansard

External links

• Bound Congressional Record
• Congressional Record
• HeinOnline

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