Hearings

Committee hearings scheduled by the House and Senate. This data is taken from original House and Senate sources.

This endpoint is future-looking. We don’t automatically delete data on past hearings, but we also don’t guarantee non-recent data will remain available.

Methods

All requests require a valid API key, and use the domain:

https://congress.api.sunlightfoundation.com

/hearings

Search and filter through committee hearings in the House and Senate. Filter by any fields below that have a star next to them. All standard operators apply.

House committee hearings in DC

/hearings?chamber=house&dc=true

Hearings about ‘children’

/hearings?query=children

This will search hearings’ description field.

Fields

* = can be used as a filter

Basic details about the related committee will appear in the committee field.

{
  "committee_id": "HSIF",
  "occurs_at": "2013-01-22T15:00:00Z",
  "congress": 113,
  "chamber": "house",

  "dc": true,
  "room": "2123 Rayburn HOB",
  "description": "Hearings to examine the state of the right to vote after the 2012 election.",

  "bill_ids": [],

  "url": "http://energycommerce.house.gov/markup/committee-organizational-meeting-113th-congress",
  "hearing_type": "Hearing"
}

* committee_id
The ID of the committee holding the hearing.

* occurs_at
The time the hearing will occur.

* congress
The number of the Congress the committee hearing is taking place during.

* chamber
The chamber (“house”, “senate”, or “joint”) of the committee holding the hearing.

* dc
Whether the committee hearing is held in DC (true) or in the field (false).

room
If the hearing is in DC, the building and room number the hearing is in. If the hearing is in the field, the address of the hearing.

description
A description of the hearing.

* bill_ids
The IDs of any bills mentioned by or associated with the hearing.

url
(House only) A permalink to that hearing’s description on that committee’s official website.

* hearing_type
(House only) The type of hearing this is. Can be: “Hearing”, “Markup”, “Business Meeting”, “Field Hearing”.

Committee Details

{
  "committee": {
    "address": "2125 RHOB; Washington, DC 20515",
    "chamber": "house",
    "committee_id": "HSIF",
    "name": "House Committee on Energy and Commerce",
    "office": "2125 RHOB",
    "phone": "(202) 225-2927",
    "subcommittee" :false
  }
}

House Witness Details

For house hearings, witness information is extracted from the xml.

first_name
First name of the witness.

last_name
Last name of the witness.

middle_name
Middle name of the witness when provided.

organization
Organization of the witness.

position
Position held by the witness.

description
Description of the witness document, if provided.

published_at
Date and time the witness document was published.

witness_type
Description of the witness such as Government - Federal, Non-Governmental, Government - State

url
The link to the original witness document.

permalink
A back-up copy of the witness document.

witnesses: [
  {
    first_name: "Phil",
    last_name: "McGraw",
    middle_name: null,
    organization: "Dr. Phil",
    position: "Talk Show Host",
    witness_type: "Non-Governmental",
    documents: [
      {
        description: null,
        published_at: "2014-05-29T18:50:22Z",
        type: "Witness statement",
        url: "http://docs.house.gov/meetings/WM/WM03/20140529/102278/HHRG-113-WM03-Wstate-McGrawP-20140529.pdf",
        permalink: "http://unitedstates.sunlightfoundation.com/congress/committee/meetings/house/1022/102278/HHRG-113-WM03-Wstate-McGrawP-20140529.pdf"
      }
    ]
  },
]

Meeting documents

(House only) Informaion about the documents related to hearings.

description
Description of the document, if provided.

published_at
Date and time the document was published.

type
This is extrapolated from the House XML document type codes.

For example: “CV”- Committee vote; “WS”- Witness statement; “WT”- Witness truth statement; “WB”- Witness biography; “CR”- Committee report; “BR”- Bill; “FA”- Floor amendment; “CA”- Committee amendment, “HT”- Transcript; “WD”- Witness document; “CV”- Committee vote; “WS”- Witness statement, “WT”- Witness truth statement; “WB”- Witness biography; “CR”- Committee report; “BR”- Bill; “FA- Floor amendment; “CA”- Committee amendment; “HT”- Transcript; “WD”- Witness document; “Other” is used for all other codes

version_code
The short-code for what stage the version of the bill is at.

bioguide_id
If a Member of congress is affiliated with the document, their bioguide should appear here.

bill_id
A bill id for the document, if provided.

url
The link to the original document.

permalink
A back-up copy of the document.

An example of meeting documents:

meeting_documents: [
  {
    description: "FY 2015 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Bill - Full Committee Draft",
    published_at: "2014-04-08T13:57:39Z",
    type: "Bill",
    version_code: "pih",
    bioguide_id: null,
    bill_id: null,
    url: "http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP00/20140409/102117/BILLS-113HR-FC-AP-FY2015-AP00-MilCon.pdf",
    permalink: "http://unitedstates.sunlightfoundation.com/congress/committee/meetings/house/1021/102117/BILLS-113HR-FC-AP-FY2015-AP00-MilCon.pdf"
  },
  {
    description: "FY 2015 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Bill - Draft Committee Report",
    published_at: "2014-04-08T13:57:39Z",
    type: "Committee report",
    version_code: "ih",
    bioguide_id: null,
    bill_id: "hr-fy2015-milcon-113",
    url: "http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP00/20140409/102117/HRPT-113-HR-FY2015-MilCon.pdf",
    permalink: "http://unitedstates.sunlightfoundation.com/congress/committee/meetings/house/1021/102117/HRPT-113-HR-FY2015-MilCon.pdf"
  },
  {
    description: "FY2015 Military Construction/VA Bill - Adopted Amendment-Culberson",
    published_at: "2014-04-10T14:28:11Z",
    type: "Committee amendment",
    version_code: "ih",
    bioguide_id: "C001048",
    bill_id: null,
    url: "http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP00/20140409/102117/BILLS-113-HR-FC-AP-FY2015-AP00-Amdt-1.pdf",
    permalink: "http://unitedstates.sunlightfoundation.com/congress/committee/meetings/house/1021/102117/BILLS-113-HR-FC-AP-FY2015-AP00-Amdt-1.pdf"
  },
]

hearing_id
A hash id for the hearing. For the House, the hearing_id is a MD5 hash of the House Event ID, a unique identifier used for the hearing. For Senate hearings, the hearing_id is a MD5 hash of the date, Committee ID and Subcommittee ID.

house_event_id
A unique identifier assigned by the House to identify a hearing.

Please note that if the witness is not identified as being attached to a document in the witness list XML, the documents will show up as meeting documents.

We are working on expanding our offering of Senate documents and hearing information. The House Committee materials are provided through the centralized and machine readable offerings of the docs.house.gov Committee Repository.