About Committee Reports of the U.S. Congress

Committee reports are one set of documents among the variety of document types produced by House and Senate committees that address legislative and other policy issues, investigations, and internal committee matters. Committee reports usually are one of these types:

1. reports that accompany a legislative measure when it is reported for chamber action
2. reports resulting from oversight or investigative activities
3. reports of conference committees
4. committee activity reports, published at the conclusion of a Congress.

Committee reports are uniquely identified by a standardized citation that includes the Congress, chamber (House or Senate), and report number.

Executive reports are issued by Senate committees reporting on treaties and nominations. Executive report citations begin with the prefix 'Ex. Rept.' followed by the Congress and report number. For example, Ex. Rept. 113-11.

Browsing Committee Reports

You can browse separate lists of committee reports by type:

• House reports
• Senate reports
• Executive reports

You can browse refine with filters or Search Within. Note that reports issued in multiple parts (e.g., H.Rpt.114-598) and reports for which errata have been issued generally have multiple PDFs, and counts on the Committees browse represent the number of PDFs associated with a committee report list.

Searching Committee Reports

You can search committee reports from the search bar by selecting Committee Reports as the source and entering your search terms in the search box. Committee reports are included when you search All Sources.

You also can search committee reports using the search form or advanced search, which includes a query builder and a command line search for using SOLR query syntax. See Search Tools for details on using operators and fields in your search query. Committee reports fields can be used in search bar, or the advanced search command line.

Contemporary Reports

Full text and metadata for committee reports, including executive reports, are searchable within Congress.gov (1995-present). Reports can also be browsed in number order and retrieved by citation.

The Committee Consideration tutorial explains reports within the context of the legislative process.

Historic Reports

Full text and metadata for selected committee reports are available from Century of Lawmaking. Retrieve reports by citation from 1833-1917 (23rd-64th Congresses) or browse reports in number order.