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bill_actions

Bill actions

One row per entry of the bill's own action list (actions in its BILLSTATUS document), in publisher order; actions recorded under the bill's amendments (amendments/amendment/actions) are not rows, so a roll call on an amendment can have no action here. Each row also carries the stage the action text implies, with the rule and matcher that fired, which makes congress_bills.stage auditable action by action. All columns are stored as VARCHAR.

Coverage. Sampled: bills the bill family has read from GovInfo BILLSTATUS, Congress by Congress from the 108th on; group by the Congress in bill_id to see which Congresses are filled. (measured 2026-09-28)

Data quality. One event is often entered by more than one system (source_system_name). Library of Congress and House floor rows carry an action_code; Senate and House committee rows carry none. The same event can appear once per system in different words, and some events appear in one system only (S. 545's committee report has a Senate row and no Library of Congress row; 119th Congress, checked 2026-10-03). Counting rows counts entries, not events; filtering to one system, or to rows with an action_code, drops the events the other systems alone record.

  • Parquet file: bill_actions.parquet
  • MCP query_sql support: Configured; requires an available artifact.
  • Publication status: Not established by this schema page or its measurement date.
  • Row count: Not stated here; the MCP describe_table reply gives the live count under publication.
Column Type Description
bill_id VARCHAR The bill this action belongs to.
action_index VARCHAR Zero-based position in the publisher's own action list, which runs newest first: 0 is the bill's latest action. Part of the identity.
action_date VARCHAR The publisher's actionDate for this action.
action_time VARCHAR The publisher's actionTime, where the source system states one.
action_text VARCHAR The action text exactly as written, whitespace included; NULL when the publisher stated none.
action_code VARCHAR The publisher's action code, which is what the became-law rule keys on.
action_type VARCHAR The publisher's action type (IntroReferral, Floor, BecameLaw...).
source_system_code VARCHAR Code of the system that reported the action.
source_system_name VARCHAR Name of the system that reported the action.
recorded_vote_count VARCHAR How many recordedVote entries this action carries.
is_latest_action VARCHAR True on the one actions[] entry the publisher's separate latestAction element names.
stage VARCHAR The stage this one action's qualified code and text classify as, in the same vocabulary as congress_bills.stage (introduced, committee, calendared, passed_chamber, other_chamber, conference, cleared, presented, law, or the outcomes failed and vetoed; never passed_both, which is a bill's state, not one action's); introduced with stage_rule NULL when no rule classifies the action, as for the desk or a floor step in the bill's own chamber. An action reads cleared where its own words complete agreement on one text; a chamber's agreement to a conference report reads conference here, and the bill reads cleared from the second. One action's classification, not the bill's state.
stage_rule VARCHAR Which stage rule fired on this action (the names congress_bills.stage_rule lists, but never passed_both), or NULL when none did.
stage_matcher VARCHAR The matched text pattern, publisher code or vote-result reading used by the named rule.