Congressional Records and Hearings - Legislative records, communications, and hearings
records_and_hearingsRetrieve congressional records, communications, and hearings by date, congress, chamber, or keywords; get full-text content and metadata for legislative research.
Instructions
Congressional Records and Hearings - Access legislative records, communications, and hearings.
CONGRESSIONAL RECORDS (3 operations):
• search_congressional_record/daily/bound - Search legislative records by date/volume
COMMUNICATIONS (8 operations):
• House: search_house_communications/requirements, get_details/matching
• Senate: search_senate_communications, get_senate_communication_details
• Committee: get_committee_communication_details
HEARINGS (5 operations):
• search_hearings, get_hearings_by_congress/chamber, get_hearing_details/content
REQUIRED PARAMETERS (the schema marks every parameter optional because
one shared schema covers every operation -- these operations fail
without the values below):
• congress -- get_hearings_by_congress
• congress + chamber -- get_hearings_by_congress_and_chamber
• congress + chamber + jacket_number -- get_hearing_details,
get_hearing_content
• congress + communication_type + communication_number --
get_senate_communication_details, get_house_communication_details
• congress + chamber + communication_type + communication_number --
get_committee_communication_details
• requirement_number -- get_house_requirement_details,
get_house_requirement_matching_communications
(search_congressional_record/daily/bound and every other search_*
operation need none of the above)
Key params: operation, year/month/day, keywords, congress, chamber, jacket_number
Returns structured record/hearing data with full text content and metadata.
Input Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| day | No | ||
| sort | No | ||
| year | No | ||
| limit | No | ||
| month | No | ||
| chamber | No | ||
| congress | No | ||
| keywords | No | ||
| operation | Yes | ||
| issue_number | No | ||
| to_date_time | No | ||
| jacket_number | No | ||
| volume_number | No | ||
| from_date_time | No | ||
| communication_type | No | ||
| requirement_number | No | ||
| communication_number | No |
Output Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| error | No | Present when success is false: the section-9 error envelope | |
| items | No | Results of other kinds (communications, requirements), as returned by Congress.gov | |
| records | No | Congressional Record results | |
| success | Yes | Whether the operation was successful | |
| summary | Yes | Human-readable summary of the results | |
| hearings | No | Hearing results | |
| item_kind | No | What `items` contains (communication, requirement, daily_record, bound_record, ...) | |
| operation | Yes | The operation that was performed | |
| results_count | Yes | Number of items returned (equals the populated list's length) |