A few weeks ago I wrote an article on ways to follow congress. This is a follow up to that article. The first article’s focus was to find and follow your representatives in congress. The next step to take is following the bills congress is working on and what is in those bills. To do this we will turn again to opencongress.org. The bill area of Open Congress allows you to see all different types of bills in  congress. Here you can find almost any bill you want to and read the details of each bill. If you go to the details of the bill  you can see what state the bill is in.

Here you can see who sponsored the bill and where in its lifecycle it is at. As you can see above this bill was passed by the house 6/26/09 and nothing as happen on the bills since. The next great tool you have here is to read about the bill and see areas most commented on.

By clicking on the official bill text link you can read the entire bill. This is some times easier to do then others, especially when the bill is over 1,400 pages long. That is another issue with government we will have to talk about at another time. If you click on the bill text the first thing you will see is a history of how the bill has changed between Senate and House and even how it changed while on the floor for debate.

It is hard to follow all the bills going through congress so don’t try and follow them all. Start by just following the bills which are most important to you. This will be much less overwhelming and help you get started. The great thing about follow a bill via Open Congress is the tools available to you. As you read the bill you can comment on any section of the bill and read comments others have made about the bill. It also lets you get to permalinks to certain sections of a bill.

You can quickly see areas of a bill people are talking about and learn what different opinions are about a bill. It is especially helpful when people make thoughtful insightful comments instead of just spewing anger and comments which really don’t hold a well thought out argument.

I hope this helps you follow what bills congress is working on and help provided feedback and thoughtful arguments and respectful opinions with a larger community.

Finally, once you have read the bill and understand the pros and cons you can cast your own vote on the bill and see how the community is voting on the bill as well. The other great thing is if you are registered and logged in with the site you can see how your representative voted for the bill as well and see if they voted the same way as you.