Congress.org was created in 1996 as a joint venture by two Washington, DC area firms with expertise in “communicating with Congress.” It is one of several Web sites which have helped to make information about members of Congress more readily available than was possible with traditional printed sources such as the Congressional Directory, published by the US Government Printing Office, and the Congressional Staff Directory, published by CQ Press. The top level page of Congress.org has five main sections:
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1Congress Today provides a list of House and Senate Committee meetings for that day, when Congress is in session.
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2Find Your Reps enables you to search by ZIP code to identify and obtain information on your members of Congress. It also allows you to compose and send messages to your Congressmen by e‐mail or snail mail.
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3Capital [sic] Directory, which includes a Congressional directory arranged by state and also alphabetically, a directory of key White House and Supreme Court officials and state governors, and a useful section on communicating with Congress.
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4Legislation, which enables you to search for the text of recent laws and current legislation, in addition to selected key votes of the 105th and 106th Congress.
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5Scorecard, which lets you know how each member of Congress voted on legislation most important to the following four organizations: Christian Coalition, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, League of Private Property Voters, and Public Citizen.
The Find Your Reps section has background information on each member of Congress, including his or her home town, previous occupation, education, birthplace, date of birth, spouse’s name, and religion. Included are links to e‐mail addresses and Web sites as well as telephone and fax numbers and office mailing addresses. There are also links to pages which give the names of key staff members and a list which records how the Congressman voted on selected votes from 1997 to date. The list of selected votes has links which provide a brief summary of the bill or motion voted on and a list of how other members of Congress voted on the same bill. Most of this information, except for voting records, is also available online from the official Congressional Directory, at http//www. access.gpo.gov/congress/cong016.html; but Congress.org provides more approaches for accessing information about members of Congress and also includes photographs of the Congressmen, which are not included in the printed or online version of the official Congressional Directory.
An alternative source of photographs is the Congressional Pictorial Directory, available in print from the Government Printing Office or on the Web at http//www.access.gpo.gov/ congress/106_pictorial/index.html. Many pages of the Congress.org Web site use frames or tables; but the inherent drawbacks of printing pages with frames has been overcome by providing a “printer‐friendly” version of these pages which prints all of the information included in each frame. Congress.org does not include information on as many Congressional staff members as may be found in the printed 1999 Congressional Staff Directory; but this difference is probably not important to most users.
The Congressional Directory, which is included in the Capital [sic] Directory section, permits searching by any of the following options: State Delegations, Alphabetic List, Senate Committees, House Committees, Congressional Leadership, Key Officers, ZIP Code, and Member Name. The Member Name search can be done by either scrolling through a list or typing a last name; and the search can be refined by limiting by political party, chamber, or state.
The information on Senate and House Committees includes the names of Members of the Committees and Subcommittees, and contact information, with links to the Web page of the Committee. There is great variation in the features included on the Web pages of Congressional Committees; but many of them include the text of reports and testimony presented during Congressional hearings, sometimes as far back as 1995. Congress.org provides systematic and easy access to these publications, which can also be accessed through Thomas, from the Library of Congress. The information on Capitol Hill Basics which is included in this section has a very nice two page summary on the legislative process which clearly delineates the steps required for a bill to become law. It also includes tips on writing or telephoning members of Congress.
The Legislation section of this site serves two main functions. The first function is a gateway to Thomas, a substantial and authoritative source of federal legislative information on the Internet. This service is provided by the Library of Congress and includes the text of public laws back to 1973, current bills in Congress, roll call votes for the House and Senate, the text of the Congressional Record back to 1989, and the text of selected Committee Reports and Hearings. The second function is to provide the results of selected key votes in the House and Senate, with tallies linked to individual members. This information is also available on Thomas, which provides tallies for a longer period of time and is not selective, but which has briefer summaries of the legislation or purpose of the motion.
The Scorecard section of this page is the weakest section and does not compare favorably to several other online resources, such as CapWeb, at http//www.capweb.net, or Project VoteSmart, at http//www.vote‐smart.org/ both of which provide ratings by a broader spectrum of interest groups.
There are many online sources for information about the United States Congress. Congress.org and CapWeb are two of the best. They are quite similar in the features they offer and either one can be recommended as a solid choice for bookmarking or linking from personal or institutional Web pages. Congress.org is well organized, has clear and concise pages, and enhanced printing capabilities for pages with frames. CapWeb provides more links to other online resources, including a weekly electronic publication, The Hill on the Net, which should be of interest anyone involved in politics within the Washington Beltway. Other substantial sources for Congressional information include Project Vote Smart, which has information on state legislators as well as members of Congress; Thomas, which has been previously described; and C‐SPAN.org, which provides live audio and video coverage of Congress as well as many of the same features found at Congress.org.
