Real_Time_Congress_API / amendments [revision 0]

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The amendments collection holds all amendments to bills and resolutions offered in Congress.

Amendments may be offered on behalf of either a legislator or a committee.

Amendment IDs

Amendments IDs are a combination of the chamber, the amendment number, and the session of Congress an amendment was offered in. They are of the format:

[chamber][number]-[session]

For example, Senate amendment no. 4850 from the 111th Congress would be "s4850-111".

Guaranteed fields

All fields are guaranteed. All amendments should have an associated bill, an associated sponsor, and at least one action.

Text search fields

If the "search" parameter is passed to the API, a case-insensitive pattern match of the given string is applied to the following fields:

  • description
  • purpose

Fields

session
The session of Congress this amendment was offered during.
number
The amendment's official number.
chamber
The chamber the amendment was offered in. Either "house" or "senate".
state
The current state of the amendment. One of "fail", "offered", "pass", or "withdrawn".
offered_at
(timestamp) Time the amendment was offered. **Default order for this collection.**
description
Official description of the amendment. Not clear what distinguishes this from the "purpose" field.
purpose
Official purpose of the amendment. Not clear what distinguishes this from the "description" field.
sponsor_type
The type of sponsor of the amendment. Can be either "committee" or "legislator".
sponsor_id
Either the bioguide ID of the legislator, or the committee ID of the committee, that is sponsoring the amendment.
sponsor
An object with basic information about either the legislator or the committee that is sponsoring the amendment.
bill_id
ID of the associated bill.
bill
Basic information about the associated bill.
actions
An array of all actions upon an amendment, in sequence. Fields described below.
last_action_at
(timestamp) The time of the last action to happen to a bill.

actions

text
Text describing the action that occurred to the bill.
acted_at
(timestamp) Date or time the action occurred.
type
Type of action that occurred. One of "action", "vote", or "withdrawn".

Example

Below is an example of Senate Amendment No. 4843 in the 111th Congress.