For kids, students and classrooms
How Congress works
Everything on this site is about one thing: ideas for laws, and whether they make it. Here is how that works, in five steps. Tap any underlined word anywhere on the site to see what it means.
What Congress is
Congress is the part of the United States government that writes the laws. It has two halves, called chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The House has 435 voting members. States with more people get more Representatives. The Senate has 100 members: every state gets exactly two Senators, big or small.
The people in Congress are chosen by voters. That is what the November 3, 2026 election is about.
What a bill is
A bill is an idea for a new law, written down. It is not a law yet. A member of the House or the Senate hands it in, and it gets a number so everyone can find it.
H.R. 1 means the first bill handed in on the House side. S. 1 means the first on the Senate side. Some things with Res. in the name are statements, not laws.
The trip a bill takes
Every bill page on this site starts with this bar. It shows where the bill is on its trip. Tap a stop to see what happened there.
Example bill · Where this bill is now
In the Senate right now.
This example bill passed the House and is waiting for the Senate to vote. (Made-up example, not a real bill.)
- Introduced. Someone hands the idea in.
- House. A committee reads it first. Then the whole House votes.
- Senate. The Senate does the same. Both halves have to say yes to the exact same words.
- President. The President signs it, or says no. Saying no is called a veto.
- Law. Signed means it is the law now. It gets a new number, like Public Law 119-21.
Most bills never finish the trip. That is normal. Thousands are handed in, and only a few hundred become laws.
How a vote works
Each member says Yes or No. If more than half say Yes, it passes. In the House that is at least 218 of 435. In the Senate, more than half is 51 of 100, but to stop a long talk-it-to-death block, called a filibuster, the Senate needs 60.
On this site, a vote with a colored edge is a final vote. The other votes are about how to run the day, like whether to start talking about the bill.
Every single vote is written down with every member's name. That is called a roll call. You can see it here for every member.
Try it yourself
- See what Congress passed today.
- Type your ZIP code to find the three people who speak for you.
- Open any bill and read the part called What this bill does.
- Pick a bill and follow its trip on the bar for a week. Did it move?
Everything on Public Law Tracker comes from the official records of the House, the Senate and the Library of Congress. The simple words are ours. The facts are theirs.