Comparing Text of Bills

Updated: September 2007

Overview

CQ Bill Comparison Reports let you find differences in language between bill text documents. With this tool you can compare two versions of the same bill, two related bills, or any two bills from the 104th to the current Congress. You have the choice of comparing the complete text of two bills, or selected sections of two bills.

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How do I start?

You can begin a bill comparison from the Tools page, or you can get there from any bill-related document.

From any page, click the Tools link at the top of the page. Then click on the CQ Bill Comparison Reports icon.

From the Bills Tab, select a checkbox next to a bill and click on the "Compare text of bills" icon among your function options near the top of the page.

From CQ BillTrack, CQ BillWatch or CRS Bill Digest documents, click the icon at the right of the page. When you go to the Bill Comparison form, the bill number and Congress will already be filled in.

From Bill Text documents, you have several options, shown in the Bill Comparison box to the right of the text.

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How do I fill in the bill comparison form?

Start with the numbers of the bills you need to compare. If you are comparing two versions of the same bill, enter the same bill number twice. If you have entered the form from a bill-related document, some of the information will already be filled in for you.

The Bill Comparison form defaults to the current Congress, the latest version and the complete text. But you can choose any Congress back to the 104th, any existing version of the bill, and any set of sections from the bill.

To compare a different version, click "choose another version". The form will refresh with a drop list of all the available versions for that bill. The bill and Congress number will also now be "locked in" unless you click the "change bill or Congress" link. The version that displays in the drop-list is the version that will be compared.

To compare only certain sections, click "choose specific sections". You will see a hit list of available sections, with checkboxes next to each section heading.

Hints about comparing by section:

To compare to a related bill, click "select related bill". You will see a list of bills designated by CQ BillTrack editors as related bills. This includes companion and counterpart measures, incorporations, and alternatives proposed by the other party. Click the "Select" button to return to the form with the selected bill's information filled in. At that point, you can change the version or sections if you need to.

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How do I read the report?

The bill comparison report is built with a tool that looks for identical blocks of text, and uses them as benchmarks for comparing the rest of the document. This works best with bills that have large blocks of similar text.

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What do the colors on the report mean?

As the key at the top of each report shows, the colors correspond to the types of text in the report:

Blocks of text that appear in both bills have a white background and are displayed across both columns.

Blocks of text that appear in only one bill but not the other have a gray background if the bill text is on the left, and a pale blue or lavender background if the bill text is on the right. This text appears only in the column of the bill that contains the text, and the other column appears blank. Gray or blue segments will always have white segments above and below them. This is because the bill comparison tool looks for language that is unique surrounded by language that is the same. Long sections of text with no similarities will appear as yellow, changed text rather than as unique text, even though they usually have some unique text in them.

Blocks of text that have changes in the text between one version and the other appear yellow, in side-by-side columns. The yellow sections have some text that is the same, some with differences, and some words, lines or complete paragraphs that exist only in one bill or the other.

Blocks of yellow text can be long, and sometimes one column is much longer than the other. Use the magnifying glass icon to look closer at these sections and see the word-for-word differences (See What does the magnifying glass do?).

On the version for printing, these color differences appear in shades of gray.

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What do "only in the left bill"..."only in the right bill" mean?

The comparison is looking to see which words in the left bill would have to be changed in order for it to be absolutely identical to the right bill. This means that if it finds segments A, B and C in the left bill and finds that in the right bill, segment A is followed directly by segment C, it will consider segment B to be found "only in the left bill". This is so, even if later on in the right bill, there is a section that talks about segment B. This is because it is looking in the right bill for exact matches to text of the left bill -- in the same sequence within the bill.

If segment A and segment C match exactly in both bills - word for word, including capitalization and punctuation - but there is text in between that does not match, it will consider this other text to be "changed" text, even if it includes text in one bill that is clearly not found in the other bill - text that would seem to merit an "only in..." indicator

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What do the little black arrows do?

The black arrows alongside each segment of text jump you to the next segment up or down. This is handy when scrolling through long bills looking for the next segment.

If you find yourself scrolling or jumping to the bottom of a long bill to get to the section you need, you may want to go back to the top and click "Modify Report" to get back to the form, and then select only the specific sections you need to compare.

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What does the magnifying glass do?

Wherever there are blocks of yellow text signifying that language has changed between the two bills, you will see a magnifying glass icon. Click this icon, and a new window will pop up that gives you a closer look at the changes between the two columns.

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How do I find exactly what has changed in a yellow segment?

First, click the magnifying glass icon so that the segment detail window pops up. The segment detail window uses color, bold and italic text to show which words are the same, which words have changed and which appear only in one bill or the other.

The words that are the same in both bills appear as plain text on a white background. The Bill Comparison tool will look for any text in the second bill that is the same as the text in the first bill including punctuation. In very dissimilar sections, you may see that only words like "of" or "the" appear as plain text, and the rest of the text is in italics.

This tells you that the language is too dissimilar for a meaningful comparison.

Text that is different between the two bills appears in italics, with a gray background for the bill on the left and a yellow background for the bill on the right.

Words that appear only in one bill appear in bold, with a gray background for the bill on the left and in bold with a yellow background for the bill on the right. Bold text will always have white text on either side of it. This is because the bill comparison tool looks for language that is unique surrounded by language that is the same. Long sections of text with no similarities may appear as changed text rather than as unique text, even if there are unique sections in it.

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What do "only in 1st bill segment"..."only in 2nd bill segment" mean?

In the magnifying glass window, which evaluates segments on a word-by-word basis, "only in 1st bill segment" and "only in 2nd bill segment" mean there are two exact matches of text in between which there is text in one bill but no text in the other bill.

Most of the time, the differences between bills are not this clear cut. That is why most differences between bills are shown as "changed" text, rather than text unique to one bill, even though the changes may include text found only in one of the two bills.

The magnifying glass window is designed to help you better evaluate the "only in." indicators, as well as "changed" and "unchanged" text.

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Why do comparisons of bills from earlier Congresses show so many more differences?

In CQ.com, bill text for bills prior to March 2000 was formatted differently than more recent bill text. In these earlier bills, there were line breaks at the ends of each line of text, which the CQ Bill Comparison Reports may consider to be differences between bill text documents. Viewing segment detail in the magnifying glass window can help you evaluate if the differences between bills are substantive or are instead due to differences in bill text formatting.

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How do I print the report?

The "Version for Printing" link will open a new window with a printable version of the report. The colors in the version for printing become shades of gray. Some printers (such as printers that double as photocopiers) do not print these backgrounds. In that case, remember that text that goes across both columns is the same, and text that is in side-by-side columns is unique or has changes. If there is no text shown in the opposite column for a segment of text, it means the text is found only in the one bill.

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