In the law of the United States, the Code of Laws of the United States of America is the official compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal statutes. It contains 53 titles. The main edition is published every six years by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and cumulative supplements are published annually. The official version of these laws appears in the United States Statutes at Large, a chronological, uncodified compilation.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a public policy research institute of the United States Congress. Operating within the Library of Congress, it works primarily and directly for members of Congress and their committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis. CRS is sometimes known as Congress' think tank due to its broad mandate of providing research and analysis on all matters relevant to national policymaking.
Michael J. Rogers is an American former law enforcement officer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for Michigan's 8th congressional district. A Republican, Rogers served from 2001 to 2015. From 2011 to 2015, he was Chair of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
In the law of the United States, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the codification of the general and permanent regulations promulgated by the executive departments and agencies of the federal government of the United States. The CFR is divided into 50 titles that represent broad areas subject to federal regulation.
The Flag Desecration Amendment is a proposed addition to the Constitution of the United States that would allow the U.S. Congress to prohibit by statute and provide punishment for the physical "desecration" of the flag of the United States. The concept of flag desecration continues to provoke a heated debate over protecting a national symbol, preserving free speech, and upholding the liberty said to be represented by that national symbol. While the proposal has been passed by the two-thirds majority required in the House of Representatives several times, it has not passed the Senate by the same super-majority and has often not come to a vote in the Senate despite its introduction several times.
THOMAS was the first online database of United States Congress legislative information. A project of the Library of Congress, it was launched in January 1995 at the inception of the 104th Congress and retired on July 5, 2016; it has been superseded by Congress.gov.
A conference committee is a joint committee of the United States Congress appointed by the House of Representatives and Senate to resolve disagreements on a particular bill. A conference committee is usually composed of senior members of the standing committees of each house that originally considered the legislation.
Parliamentary informatics is the application of information technology to the documentation of legislative activity. The principal areas of concern are the provision, in a form conveniently readable to humans or machines, of information and statistics about:
The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 is an Act of Congress that requires the full disclosure to the public of all entities or organizations receiving federal funds beginning in fiscal year (FY) 2007. The website USAspending.gov opened in December 2007 as a result of the act, and is maintained by the Office of Management and Budget. The Congressional Budget Office estimates S. 2590 will cost $15 million over its authorized time period of 2007–2011.
The Participatory Politics Foundation (PPF) is a United States non-profit organization which jointly operates the OpenCongress.org website. Intended to connect citizens to lawmakers to increase public participation with the government, the non-partisan foundation hopes to modernize the political system through technological advancements to increase civic engagement in government. The non-profit opened in February 2007 and operates OpenCongress together with the Sunlight Foundation.
Joshua Tauberer is a civic hacker, open government activist, entrepreneur, and author. He is the creator and maintainer of the website GovTrack, a portal for information about legislation in Congress, and developer for EveryCRSReport.com, which makes Congressional Research Service Reports available to the public. Tauberer is also the lead developer for Mail-in-a-Box, an Open Source software project for mail server hosting.
Akoma Ntoso (Architecture for Knowledge-Oriented Management of African Normative Texts using Open Standards and Ontologies) is an international technical standard for representing executive, legislative and judiciary documents in a structured manner using a domain specific, legal XML vocabulary.
The Streamlining Claims Processing for Federal Contractor Employees Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2013. It transfers some authority from the Government Accountability Office to the United States Department of Labor in order to streamline the implementation and enforcement of federal contractor wage laws. Previously, the United States Department of Labor was responsible for implementing the Davis–Bacon Act, "which requires that federally-contracted workers be paid the 'local prevailing wage' on government projects, and the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act (CWHSSA), which mandates that federal contractors pay their employees overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 per week." Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office was responsible for dealing with the claims of workers who did not make the correct wage. This law was designed to improve efficiency by transferring that responsibility to the Department of Labor.
The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2013 aims to make information on federal expenditures more easily available, accessible, and transparent. The bill would change reporting requirements about financial data and start a pilot program to research best practices. The bill was introduced in the House during the 113th United States Congress.
The bill H.R. 3626, long title "To extend the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 for 10 years", is a bill that extended the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 for ten years. The Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 made it "unlawful to manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer, or receive any firearm" that is not detectable by a walk-through metal detector or "of which any major component, when subjected to inspection by x-ray machines commonly used at airports, does not generate an image that accurately depicts the shape of the component." H.R. 3626 passed the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress.
The FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act of 2014 is a bill that would amend the Freedom of Information Act in order to make it easier and faster to request and receive information. The bill would require the Office of Management and Budget to create a single FOIA website for people to use to make FOIA requests and check on the status of their request. The bill would also create a Chief FOIA Officers Council charged with reviewing compliance and recommending improvements. This bill would also require the federal agency to release the information it disclosed to the person who requested it publicly afterwards.
The Capital Access for Small Community Financial Institutions Act is a bill introduced in the U.S. Congress that would enable credit unions that are privately insured to become members in the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) system. In March 2014, the bill was approved by the House Financial Services Committee by a unanimous vote of 55-0. The legislation amends parts of the Federal Home Loan Bank Act. Under current U.S. law, only credit unions that are federally insured can join the FHLB system.
The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 is a law that aims to make information on federal expenditures more easily accessible and transparent. The law requires the U.S. Department of the Treasury to establish common standards for financial data provided by all government agencies and to expand the amount of data that agencies must provide to the government website, USASpending. The goal of the law is to improve the ability of Americans to track and understand how the government is spending their tax dollars.
Congress.gov is the online database of United States Congress legislative information. Congress.gov is a joint project of the Library of Congress, the House, the Senate and the Government Publishing Office.
In the United States Congress, a bill is proposed legislation under consideration by either of the two chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives or the Senate. Anyone elected to either body can propose a bill. After both chambers approve a bill, it is sent to the President of the United States for consideration.
