At the Center for Legislative Archives, we hold the official records of congressional committees and the records of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate as a whole. This means that we hold records covering the entire legislative process -- drafts of bills, amendments, hearing and markup transcripts, committee correspondence and reports, staff working files, petitions and memorials, meeting minutes, executive communications etc.
What we don’t have are the original, signed copies of enrolled bills -- sometimes referred to as the red line copy. An enrolled bill is a bill that’s been signed by the presiding officers of the House and the Senate and sent to the President of the United States.
Once the bill is signed by the President and becomes law, it is held by a different unit within the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA). Red line copies are part of Record Group 11 -- General Records of the U.S. Government. For assistance with RG 11, or to request a copy of a signed law, please email archives1reference@nara.gov.
If you have any other legislative questions, please either post in the Legislative Community here on History Hub, or you can email the Center for Legislative Archives at legislative.archives@nara.gov. We’d love to hear from you!
For more information on how Congress works, or on engrossed and enrolled bills, Congress.gov has a great resource on the legislative process.