One of my favorite posts to do for In Custodia Legis is the annual recap for Congress.gov. Last year was terrific, and this year we were able to keep building on that success. We have been working on incorporating the Century of Lawmaking site into Congress.gov. With the first release of 2024, we added PDFs of the Congressional Globe and Register of Debates to the Browse page. We followed this by adding the House and Senate Journals from Century in PDF to the Browse page.
After that, we added the Annals of Congress Page Headings and Index to the site. Working with our Senate data partners, we were able to add Senate Committee Meeting videos. You can watch the videos from Senate items on the Committee Schedule.
In March, we made a big update to our API based on user feedback. We increased the Congress.gov API rate limit from 1,000 requests to 5,000 per hour. Later in the year, we incorporated our Glossary of Legislative Terms to our Congress.gov Help Center. In July, we added a new Appropriations Resources Video to Congress.gov. Later in July, we were able to add the “Download Results” feature to the Command Line search.
In August, the Legislative Status Steps image from H.Prt. 94-54857 was added to Congress.gov. Robert also announced that our Congress.gov Public Forum would be on September 18. It is available to watch if you missed it.
We continued to update and enhance the Century of Lawmaking content on Congress.gov when we added the Senate Journal to search in November. It is now much more accessible to search and browse than when it was just in PDF. Later that month, we added the House Journal from Century. We are actively working on finishing the Senate Executive Journal and are getting closer to launching the Congressional Globe.
We continued to do Congress.gov interviews so you can better know the people who help produce the website. Early in 2024, Legislative Analysis and Services Section Head Barbara Perkins was interviewed. We also did interviews with our data partners from the House and Senate. We were pleased to feature John Pollock, the director of the Legislative Information System Project Office, and Christy Amatos, an assistant parliamentarian. They both work for the Senate. The Legislative Counsel of the House of Representatives Wade Ballou was also interviewed.
Data Modernization
We have worked very hard on modernizing Congressional data over the last few years. This year we were able to retire some older servers thanks to this effort. Over the course of this year, we were able to share a behind the scenes look at this. Cassidy Charles kicked the series off with our efforts to modernize executive communications. She followed this up with a look at the nominations data modernization. Andrew Reiter shared three of our data modernization updates. His first was on treaty documents. It was followed by Senate and then House legislation and amendments.
Top 24 Most-Viewed Bills in 2024
Each week, the most-viewed bills are updated on Congress.gov. Each year, we do a post of the most-viewed bills for the year. Here are the following most-viewed lists going back to 2013 – 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. For the 2024 most-viewed list below, I made a note after the title for the items that became law.
- H.R.82 [118th] – Social Security Fairness Act of 2023
- H.R.7024 [118th] – Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024
- H.R.6090 [118th] – Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023
- S.596 [117th] – Treat and Reduce Obesity Act of 2021
- H.R.2 [118th] – Secure the Border Act of 2023
- S.1323 [118th] – SAFE Banking Act of 2023
- H.R.2670 [118th] – National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 [Became Law]
- H.R.9495 [118th] Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act
- H.R.5074 [118th] – Kidney PATIENT Act of 2023
- H.R.815 [118th] – Making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes. [Became Law]
- H.R.4366 [118th] – Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 [Became Law]
- S.4361 [118th] – Border Act of 2024
- H.R.5376 [117th] – Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 [Became Law]
- H.R.7521 [118th] – Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act
- H.R.8281 [118th] – SAVE Act
- H.R.7979 [118th] – End China’s De Minimis Abuse Act
- S.597 [118th] – Social Security Fairness Act
- H.R.8046 [118th] – Rosatom Sanctions Enforcement Act
- H.R.1042 [118th] – Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act [Became Law]
- S.1111 [118th] – ADVANCE Act of 2023
- S.1409 [118th] Kids Online Safety Act
- H.R.3684 [117th] Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act [Became Law]
- H.R.8070 [118th] – Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025
- S.452 [118th] – Nuclear Fuel Security Act of 2023
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2024/12/the-2024-congress-gov-top-24-and-year-in-review/?loclr=eaiclb
