congress_search_bills
Read-only
Search and filter legislation bills from Congress.gov by congress, bill type, and date range. Returns bill details with pagination.
Instructions
Search Congress.gov BILLS/legislation (api.data.gov keyed; DATA_GOV_API_KEY or DEMO_KEY). Input optional congress (e.g. 118), billType (hr/s/hjres/sjres/hconres/sconres/hres/sres — requires congress), fromDateTime/toDateTime (ISO-8601 with offset), offset, limit (≤250, def 20). Returns { bills:[{ congress, type, number, title, originChamber, latestAction, updateDate, url }] } + _meta with totalAvailable = pagination.count (EXACT). NOTE: /v3/bill has no keyword search, so a query arg is NOT applied and is disclosed in _meta.filtersDropped. Outage/4xx THROWS (never a fake empty).
Input Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| limit | No | Records per page, 1..250, default 20. | |
| query | No | Keyword — NOTE: Congress.gov /v3/bill has NO keyword search, so this is NOT applied (disclosed in _meta.filtersDropped). Use congress/billType/date filters instead. | |
| offset | No | 0-based record offset for pagination, default 0. | |
| billType | No | Bill type: hr/s/hjres/sjres/hconres/sconres/hres/sres. Requires `congress` (path /v3/bill/{congress}/{billType}). | |
| congress | No | Congress number, e.g. 118 (scopes the path to /v3/bill/{congress}). | |
| toDateTime | No | Filter to bills updated at/before this ISO-8601 date-time with offset, e.g. '2024-12-31T23:59:59Z'. | |
| fromDateTime | No | Filter to bills updated at/after this ISO-8601 date-time with offset, e.g. '2024-01-01T00:00:00Z'. |