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).

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Capitol Words Widget

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Lawmakers

Heat Map of Vocal States

(last 60 days)
Click on a state below for more information.

Words of the Day

February 04, 2010
Click on a word below for more information.
  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