Capitol Words

About Capitol Words

For every day Congress is in session, Capitol Words visualizes the most frequently used words in the Congressional Record, giving you an at-a-glance view of which issues lawmakers address on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Capitol Words lets you see what are the most popular words spoken by lawmakers on the House and Senate floor.

But wait, there's more! Capitol Words also gives you the ability to view with greater granularity which words are most frequently used by Congress as a whole, by state delegation or by specific lawmaker. It also reports on word usage trends: You can search by specific word to see its usage frequency over time, including which lawmakers most mention that term. You can also compare usage of individual terms (e.g., health vs. education) or groups of terms (e.g., health + education vs. war + terror).

You can see who are the most vocal or quietest members of Congress (i.e., those who have the most or least words attributed to them in the Congressional Record, including via extended remarks).

The Capitol Words site is powered by data collected by Sunlight's LOUIS database from GPO Access. Its API provides several methods of accessing detailed information from the Capitol Words database. All data, the calendar view of the word of the day and charts showing word usage trends go back to the second session of the 106th Congress (January 24, 2000). Views that attribute word usage to lawmakers date back to the beginning of the 110th Congress (January 3, 2007).

Heat Map of Vocal States

1. 100% 307 paygo
2. 100% 293 budget
3. 100% 258 business
4. 100% 253 financial
5. 100% 245 debt
6. 100% 224 spending
7. 100% 206 percent
8. 100% 182 tax
9. 100% 167 security
10. 100% 153 health
11. 100% 145 budgetary
12. 100% 144 public
13. 100% 143 effects
14. 100% 140 programs
15. 100% 131 service
16. 100% 129 fiscal
17. 100% 127 policy
18. 100% 123 trillion
19. 100% 120 country
20. 100% 120 deficit