Federal Legislation

House and Senate reports are reports of Congressional committees concerning proposed legislation that may contain discussions of legislative intent, a short history of a bill, and/or comparisons of current and proposed law text. Most reports make recommendations for passage of a specific piece of legislation that was considered in hearings, so these reports are a very important part of the legislative history. Many committees also issue annual or biennial activity reports that summarize their legislative and oversight activities. Reports are assigned separate sequential numbers within each Chamber (e.g., H. Rpt. 111-1, S. Rpt. 111-1) Examples of these call numbers in our Documents collection are:

Y1.1/8: 111-1 for House Reports
Y1.1/5: 111-1 for Senate Reports

House and Senate reports are included in the Serial Set, which may be found in the Proquest Congressional database and in the U.S. Congressional Serial Set from Readex.

If both the House and Senate cannot agree on the final version of the bill, a Conference is usually requested by one of the chambers and both houses will negotiate a resolution of the differences by producing a conference report that is published in the Congressional Record  and also printed as a House report.