Thomas, a free service of the Library of Congress, lets you look up major bills (bills that have hearings, floor or committee action, or attracted media attention) by subject, or look up bills by number, popular name, sponsor, or keyword. Full text of bills and amendments, calendars, CRS bill tracking reports, committee reports, floor debates from the Congressional Record, and Public Laws are all available. Many documents can be displayed in PDF format.
GPO Access is a collection of databases, searchable with the WAIS search language, including bills, bill digests (CRS bill tracking reports), committee reports, calendars, and the Congressional Record. Documents may be displayed in plain text or PDF format.
This is a looseleaf service, with summaries of bills, indexed by number, subject, or sponsor. The status of bills is updated weekly, and references are made to companion bills.
This web service offers abstracts of Committee hearings and reports, and complete legislative histories of public laws, plus the full text of bills, bill tracking reports, committee reports, hearing testimony, the Congressional Record, and the United States Code Service. Other features include a quick lookup for "hot bills" and background news stories from the National Journal.
Lexis offers the full text of bills, bill tracking reports, committee reports, testimony from hearings, public laws, roll calls, the Congressional Record, and the United States Code Service. In addition, there are state bill tracking reports; compiled legislative histories on major securities, tax, bankruptcy, and environmental laws; and, for law firms only, CIS Legislative Histories for every public law enacted since 1984. On Lexis, news stories are linked to the bills they discuss, and vice versa.
Westlaw has bill text and bill tracking reports, committee reports for public laws since 1942, and all committee reports since 1990, prepared testimony from committee hearings, the Congressional Record, public laws, and the United States Code Annotated.
The CQ Weekly provides a weekly summary of what's happening in Congress, along with behind the scenes and political information. CQ Weekly identifies bills and gives floor votes. When reading the CQ Weeekly, be sure to note: (1) the bill numbers, (2) names of key Members of Congress sponsoring the legislation and (3) the committees to which the bill is referred.
Commercially published newsletters and looseleaf services often provide current awareness information and track the status of current legislation, e.g., the CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter and Tax Notes Today. See a reference librarian, or consult Looseleaf Services in Print, to determine if an appropriate title exists for the legislation that you are tracking.