🏛️ Congress.gov Intelligence — Bills, Members, Votes & Legislation Data

Track US Congressional activity straight from the official Congress.gov API — bills, amendments, members, committees, hearings, nominations, treaties, CRS reports, House roll-call votes and the Congressional Record. Filter by Congress, chamber, bill type, state, keyword or date range, pull full sponsor and action details, and get an AI relevance score on every item so the important legislation rises to the top. API-based and reliable — no bot blocks, no broken scrapers. Export to JSON/CSV/Excel, run on a schedule, call via API, or connect to Make, Zapier or n8n.

📜 What is the Congress.gov Intelligence?

It turns the official Library of Congress data feed into a structured dataset for policy work. Pick a data_type (bills, members, votes and more), add optional filters, and it returns every matching record with clean fields — titles, sponsors, latest actions, statuses, subjects and direct Congress.gov links — plus an optional full-details mode that fetches sponsors, cosponsors, summaries, actions and bill-text links. Lobbyists, journalists, researchers and compliance teams get accurate legislative data without scraping or manual lookups.

What data does it extract?

• Bills & resolutions — title, type/number, congress, origin chamber, latest action and date, sponsor (name, party, state, bioguide id), cosponsor count, summary, subjects and policy area
• Amendments — purpose, type/number, chamber and latest action
• Members of Congress — name, party, state, district, chamber and term years
• Committees, hearings, nominations and treaties — names, dates, status and topics
• CRS research reports and the Congressional Record
• House roll-call votes (Beta) — question, result and member votes
• AI relevance score (0–100) on every item, plus Congress.gov URLs and a scraped_at timestamp
• Optional full-text links (PDF, XML, HTML) for bills and amendments

⬇️ Input

Choose a data type, add filters, then run (a free Congress.gov key is required):

Field	Description
api_key	Your free Congress.gov API key — get one at api.congress.gov/sign-up
data_type	bills, amendments, members, committees, hearings, nominations, treaties, crs_reports, house_votes, congressional_record
congress	Filter by Congress number, e.g. 118 (2023–2025)
bill_type	Bills only: hr, s, hjres, sjres, hconres, sconres, hres, sres
chamber	house or senate
state_code	Members only: 2-letter state, e.g. CA, TX, NY
search_query	Keywords in titles/descriptions, e.g. climate change
from_date / to_date	Date range filter (YYYY-MM-DD)
include_details	Fetch sponsors, cosponsors, actions and summaries (slower)
include_text	Include full-text links (bills & amendments)
max_results	Maximum results (1–10000, default 100; paginates automatically)
enable_scoring	Calculate AI relevance scores 0–100 (default true)

Example input

{
  "api_key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
  "data_type": "bills",
  "congress": 118,
  "search_query": "climate change",
  "include_details": true,
  "max_results": 100,
  "enable_scoring": true
}

⬆️ Output

Every item is one clean row (view as a table, or export JSON / CSV / Excel):

{
  "type": "bill",
  "data_source": "congress.gov",
  "bill_type": "HR",
  "number": "1234",
  "congress": 118,
  "title": "Clean Energy Innovation Act",
  "origin_chamber": "House",
  "latest_action": "Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.",
  "latest_action_date": "2024-03-15",
  "sponsor": {
    "name": "Rep. Smith, John [D-CA-12]",
    "party": "D",
    "state": "CA",
    "bioguide_id": "S001234"
  },
  "cosponsor_count": 45,
  "summary": {
    "text": "This bill promotes clean energy innovation and research...",
    "action_date": "2024-03-15",
    "action_desc": "Introduced in House"
  },
  "subjects": ["Energy", "Climate Change", "Research"],
  "policy_area": "Energy",
  "relevance_score": 85,
  "url": "https://api.congress.gov/v3/bill/118/hr/1234",
  "congress_gov_url": "https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1234",
  "scraped_at": "2026-06-26T15:30:00+00:00"
}

💡 Use cases

• 🧭 Lobbying & government affairs: monitor bills affecting your industry by keyword, committee or sponsor and act on them early.
• 📰 Journalism & research: surface newsworthy or high-relevance legislation and pull sponsor, cosponsor and action histories.
• ⚖️ Legal & compliance: track regulatory and legislative changes across a Congress, chamber or date range.
• 🎓 Academic & policy analysis: build datasets of bills, members, votes and committees for longitudinal study.

❓ FAQ

How do I track bills on a topic? Set data_type: "bills", add a search_query (e.g. artificial intelligence) and optionally a congress and date range, then run. Turn on include_details for sponsors, cosponsors, summaries and actions.

Do I need an API key? Yes — a free Congress.gov key, which you get in seconds at api.congress.gov/sign-up by entering your name and email. Paste it into api_key. There is no paid tier to subscribe to.

What data types are supported? Ten: bills, amendments, members, committees, hearings, nominations, treaties, CRS reports, House roll-call votes (Beta) and the Congressional Record.

What is the relevance score? An AI-calculated 0–100 score (when enable_scoring is on) based on recency, legislative activity, current-Congress status and importance — so you can sort the most relevant items first.

Can I get full bill text? Yes. Set include_text: true for bills and amendments to receive links to full-text versions (PDF, XML, HTML).

Can I filter members by state? Yes. Set data_type: "members" with a state_code like TX and optionally a chamber to list senators or representatives.

How many results can I pull? Up to max_results (1–10000). The actor respects the API's per-request limit, paginates automatically and retries on rate limits.

Is the data reliable? Yes — it comes directly from the official Congress.gov API, so there is no bot protection or scraping to break.

Can I run it on a schedule or via API? Yes. Schedule recurring runs in Apify, call it via the API/SDK, or connect it to Make, Zapier or n8n to keep a legislative feed live.

Is it legal? It uses the official, public Congress.gov API with your own free key. Use it responsibly and follow Congress.gov's terms and applicable laws.

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