How can you follow a bill in Congress?

#Read the citation first

A federal measure has a type, a number and a Congress. A Congress lasts 2 years, and GovInfo says bills are numbered per Congress and bill type, so a full citation needs all three: H.R. 3076, 117th Congress. The number stays with the measure through all its stages.

• H.R. and S.: House and Senate bills. “H.R.” stands for House of Representatives, not House resolution.
• H. J. Res. and S. J. Res.: joint resolutions. They follow the same procedure as bills, except for proposed constitutional amendments, which do not go to the president.
• H. Con. Res. and S. Con. Res.: concurrent resolutions, which are not presented to the president and normally are not legislative in character.
• H. Res. and S. Res.: simple resolutions on the rules, operation or opinion of one chamber, considered only by that chamber.

#One law, followed through the record

H.R. 3076 became the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022. Its official status record, which GovInfo publishes as a data file, shows it was introduced on May 11, 2021, and became Public Law 117-108 on April 6, 2022, 330 days later. The record holds more than 60 separate actions. The steps below are the ones that moved the bill forward.

The record also keeps the text of each stage, so you can compare versions: introduced, reported, engrossed, placed on the Senate calendar, enrolled and public law. The Congress.gov page for this bill is congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3076, as listed in the Library of Congress’s data service.

#What the labels mean

• Referred: sent to a committee. H.R. 3076 went to 3 House committees.
• Ordered to be reported: the committee voted to send the bill to the full chamber.
• Reported: the bill as it left committee, including any committee changes, usually with a written committee report.
• Discharged: the record shows the committee no longer holds the bill. Two committees were discharged from H.R. 3076 without reporting it.
• Placed on calendar: eligible for floor consideration. GovInfo says a place on a calendar does not guarantee consideration.
• Cloture: a Senate vote to limit debate. A motion to take up a bill and the bill itself can each need one.
• Engrossed: the official copy as one chamber passed it, with floor amendments, certified before it goes to the other chamber.
• Enrolled: the final official copy that both chambers passed in identical form.
• Became Public Law: the law’s number joins the Congress number to a sequence number, so 117-108 is a law of the 117th Congress.

#The tracker, alerts and related bills

The Law Library of Congress describes the Congress.gov tracker as showing legislative status steps at a high level. In a past Congress, the tracker stops at the last step completed, and “Became Law” no longer displays if the bill can no longer become law.

• Alerts: when the Library launched alerts in 2015, a legislation alert sent one daily email when a bill got a new summary, text, cosponsor or action.
• Summaries: Congressional Research Service analysts write the bill summaries.
• Related bills: a bill’s text can become law inside a larger measure. As of August 2026, the Library says the “Related Bills” tab can show a law that contains a bill’s text.