About Open Congress

OpenCongress brings together official government information with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress.

For most people, finding out what's really happening in Congress is a daunting and time-consuming task. The legislative process is frequently arcane and closed-off from the public, resulting in frustration with Congress and apathy about politics.

Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists know what's really going on in Congress, but this important information rarely makes its way into the light. The official website of the library of Congress, Thomas, publishes the full text of bills, but we can do much more to inform ourselves and make our government accessible. Now, with OpenCongress, everyone can be an insider.

OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation.

OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation.

OpenCongress brings together, for the first time in one place, all the best data on what's really happening in Congress:

    * Official Congressional information from Thomas, made available by GovTrack.us: bills, votes, committee reports, and more.
    * News articles about bills and Members of Congress from Google News.
    * Blog posts about bills and Members of Congress from Google Blog Search and Technorati.
    * Campaign contribution information for every Member of Congress from the website of the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets.org.
    * Congress Gossip Blog: a blog written by the site editors of OpenCongress that highlights useful news and blog reporting from around the web. The blog also solicits tips, either anonymous or attributed, from political insiders, citizen journalists, and the public in order to build public knowledge about Congress.

Lawmakers' Profits Are Scrutinized
Hastert and Others Defend Land Gains

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 22, 2006; Page A01

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) made a $2 million profit last year on the sale of land 5 1/2 miles from a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds. ...

Welcome to Congresspedia, the "citizen's encyclopedia on Congress" that anyone can edit. Congresspedia is a collaborative project of the Center for Media and Democracy (http://www.prwatch.org) and the Sunlight Foundation (http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/) and is designed to shine more light on the workings of the U.S. Congress. Congresspedia is part of SourceWatch, a collaboratively-written, wiki-based website documenting the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda.

GovTrack.us is a nexus of information about the United States Congress. GovTrack follows the status of federal legislation and the activities of your senators and representatives. Research on bankruptcy, trade and taxation etc.

This site, washingtonpost.com's U.S. Congress Votes Database, is a deep database of every vote in the United States Congress since the 102nd Congress (1991). It lets you browse votes in a variety of ways -- both in aggregate and for individual members of Congress.

Browse the database by drilling down to a particular Congress (e.g. 109th Congress) or particular member (e.g. 109th Congress senators).

This site publishes an RSS feed of recent votes by each member of Congress, and a feed of the most recent votes in both chambers. See the RSS page for full details.

This site is generally updated every day, although there is a delay between a vote in Congress and its appearance on the official Congress Web sites.