The Congressional Record the official record of the proceedings, debates, and activities of Congress and provides a substantially verbatim, written account of all discussion occurring on the floor of Congress. The Record also contains inserted materials, communications from the president and the executive branch agencies, memorials, petitions, and information and materials on legislation being introduced or passed.
The daily edition of the Record reports each day’s proceedings in Congress, is transmitted to the Government Publishing Office (GPO) whose employees work through the night to transcribe, proof, format and print it by the following morning, thus providing what could be viewed as Congress' daily newspaper of its own activities the previous day. Currently, each daily edition is divided into four distinct and separately paginated parts: 1) one covering House of Representatives proceedings; 2) another covering Senate proceedings; 3) a third one entitled “Extension of Remarks,” and 4) the final one called the “Daily Digest” (not the same as the daily edition).
The “Extension of Remarks” section includes additional materials inserted into the public record by legislators after the fact. The “Daily Digest” is a brief overview of the key activities in both the House and Senate to serve as a quick reference summary. Every other week GPO produces a printed index to the content of the last two weeks’ daily editions.
The Congressional Record dailies are also avaialble as a print subscription. For long-time reference, these volumes are also produced as a Congressional Record Bound edition format with numerous dailies combined together.
