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The Congressional Record

Author: United States Congress and the Government Printing Office

The Congressional Record (Congressional record: proceedings and debates of the ... Congress) is the official record of the United States Congress and is a substantially verbatim account of remarks made during the proceedings of the House and the Senate, subject only to technical, grammatical, and typographical corrections. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873 and is still published today.

The Congressional Record consists of four sections: Daily Digest, House section, Senate section, Extension of Remarks.  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. Finally, the Extension of Remarks includes tributes, statements, and other information that supplements statements made on the Congressional floor. 

The Daily Digest is the key to use of the daily Record. It is the last section in each edition of the daily Record and serves as an index. By reading the Digest first, a reader can locate the times of meetings of both houses; measures reported, considered, or signed into law; and information on the previous and current days' committee activities and schedules. At the beginning of each month, a resume of congressional activity is published. It contains cumulative, statistical information on the congressional session.

At the end of each session of Congress, all of the daily editions are collected, re-paginated, and re-indexed into a permanent, bound edition. This permanent edition, referred to as the Congressional Record (Bound Edition), is made up of one volume per session of Congress, with each volume published in multiple parts, each part containing approximately 10 to 20 days of Congressional proceedings. The primary ways in which the bound edition differs from the daily edition are continuous pagination; somewhat edited, revised, and rearranged text; and the dropping of the prefixes H, S, and E before page numbers.