The terms of art of American lawmaking, as Downstream uses them. A term is here if getting it wrong would make a claim silently incorrect.
209 entries · 10 categories · as_of 2026-08-21 · press ⌘K or / to search
How a bill physically moves, and the places it can die without anyone voting against it. Most of what looks like substance in a legislative outcome is procedure, and procedure is where provisions get stripped — which is where the zombie tracker gets its subjects.
The modern substitute for a conference committee. Each chamber amends the other's text and sends it back until one chamber concurs. Produces a chain of recorded votes on motions to concur, not on passage.
why it matters hereThis is where the vote record gets misread most often.
Motion to concur in the Senate amendmentis the operative final vote in a ping-pong, and it is not labeled passage anywhere. H.R. 6644 went through five of these.
Bars extraneous matter from a reconciliation bill on a point of order that takes 60 votes to waive. Six tests, the operative ones being that a provision must change outlays or revenues, and that its budgetary effect must not be merely incidental to its policy effect. The pre-floor scrub with the Parliamentarian is the Byrd bath; a provision struck is a Byrd drop or Byrd casualty.
why it matters hereA Byrd drop is the single highest-signal event in the corpus. The provision was drafted, negotiated, and adopted by a majority, and removed on a technicality — so its probability of resurfacing in the next available vehicle is far above the base rate for a provision that simply failed. Tag them at ingestion, not later.
see alsoReconciliation Parliamentarian Zombie provision Point of order
A vehicle that has accumulated so many unrelated riders that its title no longer describes it. Historically the year-end omnibus.
The only way to end Senate debate over objection. Requires 60 votes on most legislation, a simple majority on nominations. Filed, then ripens after an intervening day, then a vote, then up to 30 further hours of post-cloture debate.
why it matters hereCloture votes are recorded votes that are routinely misreported as passage votes.
89-10 on clotureand89-10 on passageare different facts about different questions. Always read thequestionfield, never infer it from the tally.
A joint House-Senate panel that reconciles two versions into one text, reported back as a conference report that cannot be amended. Now uncommon; ping-pong has largely replaced it.
The House mechanism for forcing a bill out of a committee that will not report it. Requires 218 signatures, which are public. Rarely succeeds; the signature list is a strong revealed preference even when it fails.
see alsoMarkup Special rule
Multiple amendments considered and adopted as one. Same provenance problem as a manager's amendment, at smaller scale.
The official preparation of a bill's text as passed by one chamber. The engrossed version is the authoritative record of what that chamber actually agreed to.
see alsoBill version codes Enrollment
The final text agreed to by both chambers, signed by the Speaker and the President of the Senate, and presented to the President. This is the only version that becomes law.
why it matters hereExtracting from
ehrather thanenris the single most common silent error in this domain. Everything before enrollment is a draft, and drafts differ.
see alsoBill version codes Public law Slip law
Extended or threatened debate used to prevent a vote. In modern practice almost never actual speech — the mere signal that cloture would be needed sets a de facto 60-vote threshold on most legislation.
see alsoCloture Hold Reconciliation
Whether an amendment is sufficiently related to the underlying bill. Strictly enforced in the House; largely absent in the Senate outside post-cloture and reconciliation, which is why Senate bills accumulate unrelated riders.
see alsoRider Special rule Byrd rule
A senator's notice to leadership that they will object to unanimous consent. Informal, not in the rules, and effective: it converts a matter that would have passed in minutes into one requiring cloture and days of floor time.
see alsoUnanimous consent Hotline
Leadership's process for polling every office for objections before attempting unanimous consent. A bill that clears the hotline passes without a vote.
see alsoUnanimous consent Hold
An omnibus amendment offered by the bill's floor manager immediately before passage, folding in negotiated changes as a single package.
why it matters hereSubstantial policy routinely enters here in one vote, with no section-by-section record. Treat a manager's amendment as a version boundary, not an amendment.
see alsoEn bloc Self-executing rule
The committee session where a bill is amended and voted on. Produces a recorded committee vote and, usually, a chairman's mark and an amendment roster.
why it matters hereCommittee votes are provision-adjacent in a way final passage never is, and they name members. For attribution this is tier two and it is badly underused.
see alsoOrdered reported Manager's amendment Sequential referral
The Senate motion to begin considering a bill. Debatable, and therefore filibusterable — so a bill can require cloture twice, once to be taken up and once to be voted on.
why it matters hereA cloture vote on the motion to proceed is frequently reported as a vote on the bill. It is a vote on whether to have the debate.
see alsoCloture Filibuster
The minority's guaranteed final chance to amend a House bill before passage. Almost always fails, and the vote is used as a message vote.
The committee has voted to send the bill to the floor. Reporting is not passage and creates no obligation to schedule.
see alsoMarkup
The nonpartisan adviser who tells the presiding officer how the chamber's rules apply. Rulings are advisory in form and dispositive in practice. Byrd bath determinations are made here, in private, and are usually reported rather than published.
why it matters hereThe determination is often the only record that a provision was dropped for procedural reasons, and it is not a machine-readable source. This is exactly the sub-regulatory dark matter the archive exists to capture.
The President neither signs nor returns a bill and Congress's adjournment prevents return, so the bill dies. Distinct from the ten-day rule: if Congress remains in session, a bill unsigned after ten days becomes law without a signature.
why it matters here"became law without the President's signature" is a fact about the enactment mechanism, not a political characterization, and it belongs on the card. Pub. L. 119-101 is exactly this case.
see alsoVeto override Public law
An objection that a pending matter violates a rule or statute. Sustained, it kills the provision; waived (60 votes in the Senate for most budget points of order), the provision survives. Most budget enforcement is a point of order rather than a prohibition.
A recorded abstention. Counts toward a quorum, counts against no threshold, and is a deliberate position rather than an absence.
see alsoRoll call vote
The majority required to do business. Quorum calls are used far more often to stall than to establish attendance.
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An expedited procedure that lets a bill implementing a budget resolution's instructions pass the Senate on a simple majority with debate capped at 20 hours, immune to filibuster. The price is the Byrd rule, which strips anything not primarily budgetary.
why it matters hereReconciliation bills are the highest-yield corpus in the system. They are large, they pass on party lines, and the Byrd rule guarantees a documented set of provisions that were dropped for procedural rather than political reasons — which is a clean natural experiment for zombie provisions.
see alsoByrd rule Budget resolution Reconciliation instructions
A provision attached to a bill it has no substantive relationship to, usually a must-pass vehicle. Distinguished from an earmark: a rider changes policy, an earmark directs money.
see alsoVehicle Germaneness Christmas tree bill
A vote where each member's position is recorded individually. In the House also recorded vote or electronic vote; a voice vote or division vote records only the outcome.
why it matters hereFour member states, not three —
yea,nay,present, andnot voting. Not-voting is not a no, and collapsing them is a false statement about a named person.
see alsoPresent Quorum Unanimous consent
The Senate procedure for bypassing committee referral and placing a bill directly on the calendar. Signals leadership intent to move something without a markup.
see alsoMarkup Discharge petition
The rule that a conference report may only address matters in disagreement between the two chambers. Material inserted in conference that appeared in neither version is an airdrop, and is subject to a point of order.
why it matters hereAirdropped text has no committee record, no amendment vote, and no sponsor — the hardest provenance case in the corpus, and disproportionately consequential.
see alsoConference committee Point of order
A special rule that adopts an amendment or an entire bill text automatically upon adoption of the rule, with no separate vote.
why it matters hereText can enter a bill with no vote of its own and no amendment record. If the pipeline reconstructs provenance from amendment votes alone, self-executed text appears from nowhere. Reconcile against the version diff, not the vote record.
see alsoSpecial rule Amendment between houses
A bill referred to more than one committee, in sequence or in parallel, each with jurisdiction over part of it.
why it matters hereJurisdiction predicts which agency receives the delegation. A bill referred to both Financial Services and Agriculture is going to delegate to both HUD and USDA, and the referral record says so before the text does.
A resolution from the House Rules Committee setting the terms of floor debate for a specific bill — time, which amendments are in order, what points of order are waived. Closed allows no amendments; structured allows an enumerated list; open allows any germane amendment, and is now nearly extinct.
House procedure for non-controversial bills: 40 minutes of debate, no amendments, two-thirds required to pass. Most bills that pass the House pass this way.
why it matters hereA two-thirds threshold makes the tally a poor proxy for support. A bill passing 390-9 under suspension and a bill passing 218-215 under a rule are not comparable measures of anything.
see alsoSpecial rule Roll call vote
The mechanism by which most Senate business actually happens. A single objection defeats it. Bills passed by UC produce no recorded vote at all.
why it matters hereThe absence of a roll call is not the absence of a decision. A card that shows an empty vote panel because the bill passed by UC must say so explicitly, or it reads as missing data — which is the Silent discipline applied to procedure.
see alsoHold Hotline Roll call vote
A bill that will pass, used to carry provisions that could not pass alone. The NDAA, the annual approps bills, and debt limit bills are the standing vehicles.
why it matters hereVehicle selection is the strongest observable predictor of whether a stripped provision resurfaces, and vehicles are on a known calendar. This makes the zombie tracker a scheduling problem as much as a text-matching one.
see alsoZombie provision Rider Christmas tree bill
Two-thirds of both chambers, on a recorded vote, enacting a bill over the President's objection.
The identifier layer. Almost every silent data error in this domain is an identifier error: the wrong version, the wrong chamber's numbering, or two different things wearing the same name.
GPO's two-letter codes for the stage of a bill's text. The ones that matter: ih/is introduced · rh/rs reported · eh/es engrossed (passed one chamber) · pcs placed on calendar · enr enrolled (passed both, going to the President).
why it matters hereVersion is part of the identity of a provision, not metadata about it.
provision_idcarries the version;lineage_idis what survives across versions.
see alsoEngrossment Enrollment Lineage ID USLM
GovInfo's structured record of a bill's actions, sponsors, committees, and related bills. Published, clean, and requires no inference.
why it matters hereBill-level status is free. Clause-level status is not. Keeping that distinction sharp is what keeps the evergreen card check a cache lookup instead of a pipeline run.
The Biographical Directory's stable identifier for a member of Congress, of the form S001227. The join key between vote records, member metadata, and portraits.
see alsoRoll call number ICPSR number
Passed by both chambers, not presented to the President, and does not have the force of law. The budget resolution is one.
see alsoBudget resolution Simple resolution
GPO's publishing system and the canonical source for bills, public laws, the Federal Register, and the CFR, in both bulk XML and API form.
The numeric member identifier used by political science datasets, including every historical roll call analysis. The bridge from vote records to the academic literature.
see alsoBioguide ID
Two unrelated things sharing an identifier. Every Congress has an H.R. 1 and an S. 1; committee prints, RINs, and docket IDs all get reused across agencies and years.
why it matters hereThe canonical instance is the two H.R. 1s — the For the People Act of 2021 and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025. Bare
HR1in a filename or a prompt is ambiguous and has already caused one documented error in prior work. Identifiers carry the Congress, always.
see alsoProvision ID RIN
Legally identical to a bill — it is presented to the President and becomes law. Used by convention for continuing resolutions, constitutional amendments, and Congressional Review Act disapprovals.
The version-independent identifier that follows a provision across ih → rh → eh → es → enr, and across bills entirely when a clause is struck from one and resurfaces in another.
why it matters hereThis is what makes a card evergreen rather than merely dated, and what makes the zombie tracker expressible as a query. Adding it later means re-minting every identifier in the system.
see alsoProvision ID Zombie provision
Whether a U.S.C. title is the law or merely evidence of it. Roughly half the titles have been enacted into positive law; for the rest, the Statutes at Large controls if they conflict.
why it matters hereFor a non-positive title, a citation to the Code is a citation to a restatement. When precision matters, cite the act.
see alsoUnited States Code Statutes at Large
Downstream's stable, version-specific identifier for a leaf provision, of the form us/119-hr-6644-enr/titII/sec204/a/2. Names the version because the text of that provision is version-specific.
see alsoLineage ID Bill version codes Provision
A bill that has been enacted, numbered Pub. L. <congress>-<sequence> in order of enactment. Private laws — affecting named individuals — are numbered separately.
A vote's identifier within a chamber and session. Numbering restarts each session and the two chambers number independently, so vote 224 is meaningless without chamber, congress, and session.
see alsoRoll call vote Bioguide ID
One chamber only, governing its own affairs. House special rules are simple resolutions.
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see alsoSpecial rule
The first official publication of an enacted law, as a standalone pamphlet, before it is compiled into the Statutes at Large.
why it matters hereThe slip law is the first citable authority and it appears well before the USLM XML of the public law. Whether to build identifiers on
enror wait forpublis a real decision with a real lag attached.
see alsoPublic law Statutes at Large
The chronological compilation of every law enacted in a session. Legal evidence of the law as passed, in the form it was passed.
The subject-matter arrangement of general and permanent federal law into 54 titles. A statute's text and its codified location are different things — an act amends the Code by instruction, and the Code is the result.
why it matters hereThe join from an act's section to the U.S.C. section it amends is the most load-bearing join in Layer 1. Everything about blast radius, cross-references, and CFR reach runs through it, and it is hand-verified at 90% before anything ships on it.
see alsoPositive law codification Conforming amendment Cross-reference
The XML schema GPO publishes bills and the Code in. Carries the section tree, identifiers, and amendment instructions as structure rather than as formatting.
why it matters hereThis is the substrate. Parsing the HTML render instead of the USLM throws away the hierarchy and the amendment instructions, and there is no way to recover them downstream.
see alsoBill version codes BILLSTATUS GovInfo
The distinction this section exists to protect: Congress authorizing a thing, Congress funding the thing, and the money actually going out the door are three separate events, and most public commentary conflates all three.
The division of total discretionary spending among the twelve appropriations subcommittees. Enforced by a point of order, and the real constraint on any individual bill.
see alsoBudget resolution Point of order
An exception written into a continuing resolution allowing a specific program to depart from prior-year levels or rules.
why it matters hereAnomalies are a ranked list of what the executive branch says it cannot wait for. That is a revealed-priority signal published on a schedule, and almost nobody reads it as one.
see alsoContinuing resolution
Prohibits obligating in excess of, or in advance of, an appropriation. Violations are reported to Congress and the President and are individually enumerated.
see alsoApportionment Appropriation
OMB's distribution of appropriated funds to an agency by time period or activity. An agency cannot obligate money OMB has not apportioned.
why it matters hereApportionment is a chokepoint between appropriation and obligation that is invisible in the statute and controlled by the executive. Since apportionment files became public, it is observable — and it is where a funded program can be quietly slowed.
see alsoImpoundment Obligation Antideficiency Act
The act of law that actually makes money available for obligation. No money leaves the Treasury without one.
see alsoAuthorization Budget authority Obligation
A law creating or continuing a program and permitting money to be appropriated for it. Authorization alone spends nothing.
why it matters here"the bill provides $X billion" is almost always false when the bill is an authorization. It permits $X billion. This is the most common single error in coverage of legislation and a card must never reproduce it.
see alsoAppropriation Authorization-appropriation gap Such sums as may be necessary
The routine condition in which a program is authorized at one level and funded at another, or at nothing. Large fractions of authorized programs are never funded.
why it matters hereThis is the mechanism behind
contingent_unfunded— the agency did not fail, Congress did not fund it. Rendering that as a missed deadline is an accusation against the wrong party.
see alsoContingent unfunded Subject to the availability of appropriations
The legal authority to incur obligations. The first of the three numbers, and the one usually quoted as though it were spending.
see alsoObligation Outlay
A concurrent resolution setting aggregate spending and revenue levels and, when desired, issuing reconciliation instructions. Not law, not signed, and enforced through points of order.
see alsoReconciliation instructions 302(b) allocation Concurrent resolution
CBO's projection of spending and revenue under current law, against which every cost estimate is measured. Changes in the baseline change every score without any policy changing.
why it matters hereThe Ledger grades CBO by criteria written in advance. Doing that fairly requires holding the baseline vintage fixed, which is the same point-in-time discipline that governs everything else here.
see alsoScorekeeping JCT estimate Point-in-time
An appropriation directed to a specific project, recipient, or location at a member's request. Since the practice returned, requests and awards are disclosed by member.
why it matters hereThe disclosure tables are a per-member, per-state, per-dollar record that joins cleanly to the vote record. It is the most state-resolved accountability data in the entire appropriations corpus.
Downstream's status for an obligation that is real but conditioned on funding that never arrived. Renders as Pending with a 45-degree hatch, not as a sixth status color.
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see alsoSubject to the availability of appropriations Authorization-appropriation gap
An appropriation continuing funding at prior-year levels when regular bills have not passed. Typically bars new starts and production rate changes unless an anomaly says otherwise.
why it matters hereA CR freezes new programs by default. A statutory deadline that lands during a CR has a materially different compliance base rate, and that is a covariate the hazard model needs rather than noise it should absorb.
see alsoAnomaly Omnibus Discretionary spending
A proposal to delay obligation of funds within the fiscal year. Permitted only for specified reasons, and subject to reporting.
see alsoImpoundment Rescission
Spending controlled through annual appropriations acts. About a quarter of federal outlays.
A statutory label exempting spending from budget caps and PAYGO. Costs nothing to apply and removes the enforcement mechanism entirely.
see alsoPAYGO Supplemental appropriation
The executive declining to spend appropriated money. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 permits it only through a rescission proposed to Congress or a deferral, both with reporting requirements and time limits.
see alsoRescission Deferral Pocket rescission
The official revenue estimate for tax legislation. Distinct from CBO, which scores spending.
see alsoCBO baseline Scorekeeping
Spending controlled by the authorizing statute itself rather than by annual appropriations. Changing it requires changing the underlying law, which is why it is reconciliation's usual target.
see alsoDiscretionary spending Reconciliation
Budget authority with no expiration. Contrast with single-year and multi-year funds, which lapse if not obligated in time.
why it matters hereThe availability period sets the deadline for the obligation-rate metric. Applying a single-year clock to no-year money produces a fictitious shortfall.
see alsoObligation Antideficiency Act
A binding commitment of the government to pay — a signed contract, a grant award. The second number, and the one that shows whether a program is actually operating.
why it matters here
obligated ÷ authorized at 24 monthsis the workhorse implementation metric in this system. It is observable, it is comparable across programs, and it resolves in two years rather than seven.
see alsoBudget authority Outlay No-year money
Multiple appropriations bills enacted as one. A minibus combines a few; a cromnibus combines full-year appropriations for some agencies with a CR for others.
Cash actually leaving the Treasury. The third number, and the one that lags the others by years for capital programs.
see alsoBudget authority Obligation
Rules requiring that new mandatory spending or tax cuts be offset. Statutory PAYGO triggers automatic sequestration; the chamber rules are enforced by points of order and are waived routinely.
see alsoEmergency designation Point of order
Sending a rescission proposal close enough to the end of the fiscal year that the 45-day clock cannot expire before the funds lapse, achieving cancellation without a vote. Contested as inconsistent with the Impoundment Control Act.
see alsoRescission Impoundment
Directions in a budget resolution telling named committees to report changes producing a specified budgetary result. The committee chooses the policy; the resolution sets the number.
see alsoReconciliation Budget resolution
Direction in a committee report or joint explanatory statement rather than in the bill text. Not legally binding. Agencies generally comply, because the same committee writes next year's bill.
why it matters hereAn enormous share of what Congress actually directs lives here and in sub-regulatory guidance — outside statute, outside the Federal Register, and outside every dataset that models legislative effect from bill text alone.
see alsoSub-regulatory guidance Congressionally directed spending
Moving funds between purposes within an appropriation account. Usually requires notifying the appropriations committees, under thresholds set in report language rather than statute.
see alsoTransfer authority Report language
A proposal to cancel budget authority. Funds may be withheld for 45 days of continuous session while Congress considers it; if Congress does not act, the money must be released.
see alsoImpoundment Deferral
The conventions determining what counts as a cost against the baseline. Timing shifts, sunsets, and effective dates are the standard tools for producing a target number without a corresponding policy change.
why it matters hereA sunset written to make a score work is a planned zombie. The expiration date is a scheduled resurfacing event, published years in advance.
see alsoSunset CBO baseline Zombie provision
Language conditioning a statutory duty on money being appropriated. Converts a mandate into a contingent one.
why it matters hereThis phrase is the difference between an agency missing a deadline and an agency never having been obliged to meet it. Extract it as a field; do not let it live in prose.
see alsoContingent unfunded Authorization-appropriation gap Shall versus may
An appropriation enacted outside the regular cycle, usually for disasters or conflicts, and usually designated as emergency.
why it matters hereDisaster supplementals resolve in 12 to 24 months rather than five to seven years, and they are geographically concrete. That makes them the fastest-resolving ground truth available, which is why they are the named pilot for the feedback layer.
see alsoEmergency designation
Statutory permission to move funds between appropriation accounts. Must be granted expressly.
see alsoReprogramming
Requires cost estimates for federal requirements imposed on state, local, and tribal governments or the private sector above statutory thresholds, and creates a point of order.
see alsoPreemption Point of order
Where a statute becomes something that actually binds anyone. The chain from enactment to enforcement is where implementation succeeds or quietly does not.
The statute governing how agencies make rules and how courts review them. Sets notice and comment, the arbitrary and capricious standard, and the terms of judicial review.
An optional pre-proposal notice soliciting input before a rule is drafted. Signals early-stage activity and does not satisfy a rulemaking mandate.
see alsoNPRM
A class of actions an agency has determined does not require an EA or an EIS. Expanding categorical exclusions is the standard statutory lever for accelerating federally supported construction.
why it matters hereA categorical exclusion is a deregulatory action that usually requires its own rulemaking. The statute creates the exclusion; the rule makes it usable. Two events, two deadlines.
see alsoNEPA EIS / EA / FONSI
The subject-matter codification of final rules, in 50 titles. Stands to the Federal Register as the U.S. Code stands to the Statutes at Large.
see alsoeCFR Federal Register United States Code
When regulated parties must actually conform. Frequently later than the effective date, and frequently the number that matters to anyone affected.
why it matters hereQuoting the effective date as the date a rule bites is wrong whenever the two differ, and they usually differ. Extract both.
see alsoEffective date Applicability date
Requires agencies to submit final rules to Congress, and allows disapproval by joint resolution on an expedited, filibuster-proof track within a lookback window. A disapproved rule is void, and the agency may not issue one substantially the same without new authority.
why it matters hereA CRA disapproval is a clean, dated, machine-checkable resolution event — the delegation was fulfilled and then unfulfilled by statute. And the substantially-the-same bar makes it a durable state change, not a setback.
see alsoSubstantially the same Lookback window Joint resolution
A guidance letter to a class of regulated parties — school districts, state agencies, lenders. Not a rule, and treated as binding by nearly everyone who receives one.
see alsoSub-regulatory guidance
A rule published as final, effective on a stated date, unless adverse comment is received — in which case it is withdrawn. Used for genuinely uncontroversial changes.
The Regulations.gov container holding a rulemaking's documents and its public comments. The join key from a rule to what the public said about it.
see alsoRegulations.gov Mass comment campaign
The continuously updated CFR with a versioning API, making point-in-time regulatory text retrievable by date.
why it matters hereWithout vintaged CFR text there is no honest way to say what a regulation required on a past date, and every backtest leaks future information.
When a rule takes legal effect. Generally at least 30 days after publication for substantive rules.
NEPA's three outcomes. An EA is the screening analysis; it produces either a FONSI or a full EIS. Each is published, dated, and citable.
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see alsoNEPA Categorical exclusion
The 1993 order establishing centralized regulatory review and the significance criteria that determine which rules go to OIRA.
A chartered outside body that advises an agency. The statute requires a charter, a designated federal officer, membership balanced across points of view, meetings open to the public, and notice in the federal-register.
why it matters hereThe meeting date is not an obligation and starts no clock. The rest of the document can be. A charter reestablishment that solicits nominations, or a rulemaking that touches FACA, carries a real
comments_close_on, and discarding it because the text said "advisory committee" drops a live deadline. Read the date field, never the committee name. Whether any of the advice reached a final rule is recorded nowhere.
see alsoFederal Register Notice and comment
The daily journal of the executive branch: proposed rules, final rules, notices, presidential documents. Publication here is the event that starts most legal clocks.
The binding rule, published in the Federal Register with a preamble responding to significant comments, and codified in the CFR.
The finding that notice and comment is impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest. Must be stated and justified in the rule, and is a frequent target on review.
An agency statement of general applicability that is not a legislative rule. Interpretive rules and general statements of policy are exempt from notice and comment; the line between those and a legislative rule is heavily litigated.
A rule issued with immediate or near-immediate effect, taking comment afterward. Requires a valid exception to notice and comment.
why it matters hereAn IFR is binding law that arrived without a comment period. For implementation tracking it satisfies the mandate; for litigation exposure it is a distinctly weaker position. Both facts are true and they must not be merged into one status.
see alsoGood cause exception Direct final rule Notice and comment
The period during which Congress may disapprove a rule. Counted in legislative and session days, not calendar days, so the real deadline depends on the chamber calendar.
why it matters hereLegislative-day arithmetic cannot be done with a date library. Get it wrong and every CRA exposure window in the corpus is wrong.
see alsoCongressional Review Act
Requires environmental review of major federal actions. Procedural, not substantive — it compels analysis, not any particular outcome. The dominant source of timeline risk for anything federally funded that gets built.
The default rulemaking process: publish a proposal, take public comment, respond to significant comments in the final rule. A rule that skips it without a valid exception is vulnerable on that ground alone.
see alsoNPRM Good cause exception Final rule
The published proposal that opens a comment period. The first machine-observable evidence that an agency is acting on a delegation.
why it matters hereThis is the primary resolution event for statute-to-rulemaking joins. It is dated, published, citable, and searchable the day it appears, which is why the Federal Register poll starts on day one rather than near the deadline.
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs review of significant rules before publication. Reviews are logged with dates, so the queue is observable.
why it matters hereA rule sitting at OIRA is at a known, timestamped waypoint between drafted and published. Time-at-OIRA is one of the few directly measurable covariates in the whole implementation chain.
see alsoEO 12866 Significant regulatory action Unified Agenda
Requires OMB approval before an agency may collect information from the public. A collection without a control number cannot be enforced.
why it matters herePRA clearance is a real, dated, frequently overlooked gate between a final rule and a program that can actually operate. A rule can be final and still inert.
The federal portal for dockets and public comments, with an API.
see alsoDocket ID Mass comment campaign
Requires analysis of a rule's effect on small entities, or a certification of no significant impact. The certification is itself reviewable.
The identifier tracking a rulemaking across the Unified Agenda and the Federal Register, from first appearance to final rule. Reused across agencies and reassigned over time.
A rule meeting EO 12866's thresholds — most familiarly an annual effect on the economy above a set dollar figure. Triggers OIRA review and a regulatory impact analysis.
see alsoOIRA review EO 12866
Everything an agency issues that shapes behavior without going through rulemaking: FAQs, Dear Colleague letters, CMS transmittals, IRS notices, program instructions, manuals.
why it matters hereA large share of how statutes actually bind is here, none of it is in the Federal Register, and it is edited and deleted silently with no version history. Nobody archives it. This is the single most urgent gap the daily snapshot exists to close, and it is the one place community expertise beats any crawler.
see alsoGuidance document Report language Dear Colleague letter
The CRA's bar on reissuing a disapproved rule. Undefined in the statute and almost never litigated, so it operates mainly as deterrence.
see alsoCongressional Review Act
The semiannual publication of what each agency intends to do and when. Self-reported, routinely slipped, and published on a schedule.
why it matters hereThe Agenda is a forecast the government makes about itself, twice a year, in writing. That makes it a graded baseline in the Ledger rather than a data source to trust — a named competitor whose accuracy is measurable.
see alsoRIN OIRA review The Ledger
The judicial rules that decide whether a rule survives. Post-2024 this layer moved substantially, and a model fitted on pre-2024 outcomes is fitted on a different regime.
A brief from someone who is not a party, filed at the certiorari stage to argue a case is worth taking or at the merits stage to argue the outcome. Since 2023 the Supreme Court requires neither party consent nor leave of court, and Rule 37.6 requires a footnote disclosing party counsel who authored the brief and anyone other than the amicus who paid for it.
why it matters hereA brief records that an entity engaged with a case, never that it changed one — the judicial form of the trap in
lda-filing. Counting briefs measures participation, and the docket supports nothing stronger.
see alsoCertiorari LDA filing
The standard for reviewing an agency's reasoning. The agency must examine the relevant data and articulate a rational connection between the facts found and the choice made. The most common ground on which rules are actually struck down.
Deference to an agency's reading of its own regulation, as narrowed by Kisor: the rule must be genuinely ambiguous after exhausting the tools of construction, and the reading must be the agency's authoritative, considered position.
why it matters hereKisor survived Loper Bright because it concerns regulations rather than statutes. That distinction decides which challenges are still weak, and conflating the two mis-scores a whole class of litigation exposure.
see alsoLoper Bright Guidance document
The Supreme Court's discretionary review. The losing party petitions within 90 days of judgment, and by the Court's own practice four justices must vote to hear it. Rule 10 names what the Court is looking for — chiefly a circuit-split or an unsettled question of federal law — and says in terms that being wronged below is not itself a reason.
why it matters herea denial of certiorari is not a ruling on the merits and sets no precedent. It leaves the decision below standing in that circuit and nowhere else, so a card that reads "cert denied" as the Supreme Court upholding a rule is wrong twice over: about what was decided, and about where it applies.
see alsoCircuit split Vacatur Amicus brief
The overruled framework: if a statute was ambiguous, a reasonable agency interpretation controlled. Still essential vocabulary, because forty years of case law and every pre-2024 observation in the corpus is denominated in it.
see alsoLoper Bright Skidmore respect
Different courts of appeals reaching different conclusions on the same question. A rule can be vacated in one circuit and in force in another until the Supreme Court resolves it.
why it matters hereLegal status becomes geographic. For a state-resolved card, the governing circuit is part of the answer, not a footnote.
see alsoVacatur
The APA's six-year limitations period runs from when a plaintiff is injured, not from when the rule was published — so a newly formed entity may challenge an old rule.
why it matters hereIt removes the assumption that a rule surviving six years is settled. Every rule in the corpus has an open challenge window, which changes the shape of the litigation hazard rather than its level.
The demanding application of arbitrary and capricious review: did the agency genuinely consider the alternatives, the comments, and the evidence.
see alsoArbitrary and capricious
Where an agency seeks civil penalties for conduct analogous to a common-law claim, the Seventh Amendment entitles the defendant to a jury trial in an Article III court, not an in-house proceeding.
why it matters hereIt constrains the enforcement link of the chain, which is the least modeled and the one where a statute finally reaches a person.
see alsoNondelegation doctrine
Overruled Chevron. Courts now exercise independent judgment on questions of statutory interpretation rather than deferring to a reasonable agency reading. Express delegations of authority are still respected.
why it matters hereThis is a regime change in the hazard model, not a covariate.
P(survives litigation)fitted on pre-2024 data does not transfer, and any backtest crossing June 2024 has to say so.
see alsoChevron deference Skidmore respect Major questions doctrine Arbitrary and capricious
For questions of vast economic and political significance, an agency must point to clear congressional authorization. Operates as a canon against reading old, general statutes to support new, large programs.
why it matters hereThis is the highest-signal single feature for litigation risk on a delegation, and it is partly extractable from text — a broad grant of authority under an aging statute plus a large economic footprint is the profile.
The principle that Congress may not transfer legislative power to the executive. Operationally dormant for decades under the permissive intelligible principle test, and the subject of sustained revival efforts.
see alsoMajor questions doctrine Delegation
Federal law displacing state or local law. Express when the statute says so; field when federal regulation is so pervasive it leaves no room; conflict when compliance with both is impossible; obstacle when state law frustrates the federal purpose.
why it matters herePreemption is the mechanism type with the most state-specific consequence and the one that most reliably makes a provision locally newsworthy. It is also the one where a card most easily overclaims — express preemption is a fact you can quote, obstacle preemption is a prediction about litigation.
see alsoSavings clause Private right of action Unfunded mandate
Whether a statute lets a private party sue to enforce it. Express when the statute creates it; implied rights are now rarely found.
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why it matters hereA mechanism type with a completely different downstream signature from a delegation. A delegation resolves through an agency on a deadline; a private right of action resolves through a docket, with no deadline and a different observable trail entirely.
see alsoPreemption Mechanism type
Sending a rule back for further justification while leaving it in force. The rule still binds during the remand.
see alsoVacatur
Whether a challenge has arrived too early. Governs whether a rule can be attacked before it is enforced against anyone.
see alsoStanding Effective date
Agency views carry weight to the extent they are persuasive — thoroughness, consistency, validity of reasoning. The weaker standard the field has substantially returned to.
see alsoLoper Bright Chevron deference
Injury in fact, traceable to the defendant, redressable by the court. Decides who may challenge a rule at all, and therefore how much of a rule's exposure is real.
see alsoRipeness Corner Post
The remedy of setting a rule aside, treating it as never having been effective. The clean negative resolution event.
why it matters here
vacatedandremanded without vacaturare different states with different downstream consequences and are routinely reported as one. A vacated rule is gone; a remanded rule is still binding while the agency fixes it.
The words that decide whether a provision is an obligation, a permission, or scenery. This is the section that governs extraction accuracy more than any other.
When a provision applies to conduct, as distinct from when the statute takes effect. Common in tax and benefits law and routinely different from the effective date.
see alsoEffective date Compliance date
The signal that a citation refers to a provision in its current form rather than as originally enacted. Without a date, an as amended citation is not point-in-time and is not checkable.
see alsoPoint-in-time United States Code
An amendment updating other statutes for consistency with a substantive change. Usually mechanical.
why it matters hereConforming amendments are excluded from obligation counts and are exactly where a substantive change occasionally hides. Exclude them from the count, keep them in the graph.
see alsoTechnical amendment Definitional amendment Cross-reference
A provision's citation to another provision. The edges of the statutory graph.
see alsoBlast radius Definitional amendment Notwithstanding any other provision of law
What a statutory deadline is counted from: enactment, appropriation, a trigger event, or nothing. Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment anchors to enactment and is computable the day the law is signed.
why it matters hereThe anchor is a first-class extracted field, not a parsing detail. Only enactment-anchored deadlines are computable at ingestion; the rest need their anchor event observed before a clock can start.
see alsoTrigger Shall versus may Subject to the availability of appropriations
A change to a defined term, which alters every provision using that term without amending any of them.
why it matters hereThe motivating case for blast radius. A one-line definitional change can silently move the meaning of dozens of statutory sections and hundreds of CFR sections. Nothing in the text of those sections changes, so nothing that reads text alone will notice.
A grant of authority from Congress to an agency. Downstream's central mechanism type: a delegation has a known downstream signature — proposed rule, final rule, challenge, enforcement — that can be fitted as a hazard model.
see alsoMechanism type Shall versus may Nondelegation doctrine NPRM
A clause overriding conflicting law without naming what it overrides.
why it matters hereIt creates a cross-reference edge to an unknown set of provisions — impossible to resolve by citation and consequential by design. Flag it as an unresolved blast-radius edge rather than dropping it.
A statutory rulemaking mandate that never produced a final rule. Congress ordered it, the agency did not do it, and nobody noticed.
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why it matters hereHundreds exist across 1990-2020. Pure aggregation, no forecasting required, and a permanent standing dataset.
see alsoDelegation Silent
Language preserving existing law, remedies, or authority from being displaced. The usual counterweight to a preemption provision, and often the whole negotiated compromise.
see alsoPreemption Severability
Whether the rest of a statute survives if one part is held invalid. An express clause makes the drafters' intent explicit; without one a court infers it.
why it matters hereSeverability decides whether litigation exposure on one provision is contained or systemic — the difference between one card changing and forty.
see alsoVacatur Savings clause
shall creates a duty. may and is authorized to create discretion. shall consider is a duty to think, not a duty to act.
why it matters hereThis is the primary inclusion rule for extraction, and it is written down before anything runs. Counts: shall issue regulations, shall promulgate, shall establish, shall submit a report. Does not count: shall consider, may issue (tracked separately as discretionary), nothing in this section shall be construed.
see alsoSuch sums as may be necessary Subject to the availability of appropriations Delegation
An authorization of appropriations with no dollar figure. Authorizes everything and nothing.
why it matters hereA card must never render this as an amount. There is no number to render, and the absence is the finding.
A date on which a provision ceases to be effective without further action.
why it matters hereSunsets are the most reliable forecastable events in the whole corpus — the date is in the text, and the reauthorization fight is on the calendar. The sunset cliff calendar is one query over this field.
see alsoScorekeeping Trigger Zombie provision
A correction of a citation, a typo, or a numbering error. Occasionally a technical amendment is substantive; the label is not a guarantee.
see alsoConforming amendment
A condition on which a provision's operation depends — a certification, a determination, a funding event, a date.
why it matters hereA trigger-anchored deadline and an enactment-anchored deadline are not comparable, and pooling them distorts every compliance rate. Track separately; do not merge.
see alsoDeadline anchor Subject to the availability of appropriations
The acronym problem, and the distinctions inside it that change what a claim means.
The controlled vocabulary for delegatedTo. Normalize at extraction; never store the string as drafted.
| Acronym | Entity | Note |
|---|---|---|
HUD | Housing and Urban Development | Department |
FHA | Federal Housing Administration | Inside HUD, not independent |
GNMA | Ginnie Mae | Government corporation inside HUD |
FHFA | Federal Housing Finance Agency | Independent; regulates the GSEs |
USDA-RD | USDA Rural Development | Rural housing programs |
RHS | Rural Housing Service | Inside USDA-RD |
CFPB | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau | Independent, funded through the Fed |
OCC | Comptroller of the Currency | Bureau of Treasury |
FDIC | Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation | Government corporation |
FRB | Federal Reserve Board | Independent |
NCUA | National Credit Union Administration | Independent |
CMS | Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services | Inside HHS |
EBSA | Employee Benefits Security Administration | Inside DOL |
FHWA / FTA | Federal Highway / Transit Administration | Inside DOT |
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why it matters herethe Secretary in a HUD title means the Secretary of HUD, and the same phrase three titles later may mean Agriculture. Resolving
the Secretaryagainst the enclosing title is an extraction rule, not a nicety.
see alsoExecutive department versus independent agency Government-sponsored enterprise Delegation
Congress's nonpartisan cost estimator and baseline keeper.
see alsoCBO baseline Scorekeeping
Congress's in-house research service. Reports are authoritative summaries of legislation, publicly available, and an excellent free head start on version comparison.
why it matters hereA CRS report comparing bill versions is hand-built ground truth for the lineage matcher. Use it to evaluate the matcher, not to train it.
see alsoLineage ID
A department sits under a Secretary serving at the President's pleasure. An independent agency has statutory insulation — fixed terms, for-cause removal, multi-member leadership.
why it matters hereInsulation is a covariate on implementation. It changes how quickly an agenda turns over with an administration, and how a delegation behaves across a transition.
see alsoIndependent regulatory commission Government-sponsored enterprise
Congress's audit and evaluation arm. Publishes legal decisions on appropriations law, ADA violations, and CRA rule determinations, and maintains open-recommendation tracking.
why it matters hereGAO does episodic, narrow versions of several things in this system, which makes it both a source and a graded baseline.
A federal entity structured as a corporation — Ginnie Mae, the FDIC, the TVA. Distinct budget treatment and distinct reporting.
A congressionally chartered private corporation with a public mission. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks. Not agencies, not appropriated, and regulated by FHFA.
why it matters hereA GSE directive is not a rulemaking and does not appear in the Federal Register. It arrives as a conservator directive, a seller-servicer guide update, or a capital rule — three different observation channels, one of which is not public.
see alsoGinnie Mae Conforming loan limit
A multi-member body with staggered terms and partisan balance requirements — SEC, FTC, FCC, NLRB, FERC. Quorum requirements mean vacancies can halt action entirely.
why it matters hereA commission without a quorum cannot issue a rule regardless of the statutory deadline. Vacancy state is an observable, dated, and almost never modeled predictor.
The official revenue estimator for tax legislation.
see alsoJCT estimate
The OMB office that reviews significant rules and administers the Paperwork Reduction Act. Small, and positioned at the narrowest point of the rulemaking pipeline.
see alsoOIRA review Paperwork Reduction Act
The executive office running the budget, apportionment, and regulatory review. The chokepoint between what a statute requires and what an agency can actually do.
see alsoOIRA review Apportionment
What is actually disclosed, which is consistently narrower than what people assume is disclosed.
Disclosure by agents of foreign principals. Separate regime, separate database, different thresholds.
see alsoLDA filing
Quarterly disclosure by registered lobbyists of clients, issues, and lobbying income or expenses. Filed with the Senate and House, and available through an API.
why it matters hereThree constraints that are easy to violate and hard to walk back. *A filing records that an entity lobbied on a bill, not for or against it.* Spend is reported per registrant per quarter across every issue in the filing, so per-bill dollar attribution is fabrication. And the specific-issue text is free-form, so bill matching is string matching with all that implies.
Large volumes of near-identical comments submitted to a docket. Comment volume is not a vote — the agency must respond to significant comments, not to counts.
why it matters hereAny comment-derived statistic must deduplicate and disclose that it did. Reporting a raw count as public opinion is the single easiest way to be wrong loudly.
see alsoDocket ID Notice and comment
The registrant is the firm or organization filing; the client is who they lobbied for. In-house lobbyists are their own client. Addresses on the filing are usually the registrant's Washington office, not the client's home state.
why it matters hereState resolution has to run off client geography, and client geography is frequently absent. If it is absent, the state panel says so rather than defaulting to the filing address.
see alsoLDA filing
Movement between government and the entities it regulates, and the statutory cooling-off periods that constrain it. Observable through LDA registrations joined to prior federal employment.
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see alsoLDA filing
The free-text field in an LD-2 describing what was lobbied on. Where bill numbers appear, in whatever format the filer chose — H.R. 6644, HR6644, the ROAD Act, or a topic with no bill number at all.
why it matters hereRecall on bill matching is a measurable quantity here, and it is not 100%. Publish the matching rule and the recall estimate alongside any count derived from it.
see alsoLDA filing Identifier collision
The first corpus. Programs, thresholds, and acronyms that carry specific statutory meaning.
The income benchmark nearly every housing program's eligibility is expressed against. HUD publishes income limits annually by household size and area, with adjustments and caps that make them not a simple percentage of the median.
why it matters here60% of AMI is not 60% of the published median. The limits are the authority; the arithmetic is not. Cite the table, never recompute it.
see alsoFair Market Rent Income limits
Single-family homes built as rental stock. The category that makes institutional-investor restrictions hard to draft — a restriction aimed at investors buying existing homes can inadvertently reach new construction.
why it matters hereDefinitional edge cases in this area were actively negotiated in the ROAD to Housing Act, with provisions added and removed across versions. A live instance of a definitional amendment changing who a rule reaches.
Development permitted without discretionary review if it meets objective standards. The main lever in state and federal supply legislation, because discretionary review is where timelines go.
see alsoPreemption NEPA
HUD's flexible formula grant to states and localities for community development. Formula-driven, so state-level effects are computable rather than estimated.
CDBG funds appropriated for disaster recovery, historically through supplementals with appropriation-specific rules published as Federal Register notices rather than as regulations.
why it matters hereThe governing rules arrive as notices, not rules — outside the CFR and outside most tracking. A textbook case for why the Federal Register poll cannot be limited to proposed and final rules.
see alsoSupplemental appropriation CDBG Sub-regulatory guidance
The maximum loan size the GSEs may purchase, set annually by FHFA using a house-price index, with higher limits in high-cost areas. FHA limits are set separately, keyed to it.
why it matters hereAn annually recomputed, county-level, published number driven by a formula in statute. It is the cleanest available instance of a
compute_formulaoutput — arithmetic on published inputs, not an estimate.
HUD's annual estimate of rent by bedroom count and metropolitan area, setting voucher payment standards. Published annually with a comment process.
why it matters hereFMR is a published annual number at sub-state geography. It is one of the few places a housing card can carry a real, current, citable local figure without estimating anything.
The government corporation guaranteeing MBS backed by federally insured loans — FHA, VA, USDA. Guarantees the security, not the loan.
see alsoGovernment-sponsored enterprise Government corporation
HUD's formula block grant for affordable housing production and rehabilitation, allocated to participating jurisdictions.
see alsoCDBG Housing Trust Fund
Tenant-based rental assistance administered by public housing agencies, portable with the tenant, capped by the payment standard derived from the FMR.
A formula block grant for extremely low income housing, funded by an assessment on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rather than by appropriation.
why it matters hereFunded off GSE volume, so its size moves with the mortgage market and not with any appropriations act. An appropriations-only view of housing funding does not see it.
see alsoGovernment-sponsored enterprise HOME
The federal construction standard for manufactured housing, which preempts state and local building codes for covered homes. The rare federal building standard.
why it matters hereAn express preemption of local law, in a statute, for a specific product class. Definitional changes here — what counts as a manufactured home — propagate directly into state and local authority, which is blast radius with a jurisdictional dimension.
see alsoPreemption Definitional amendment
The published eligibility thresholds — extremely low, very low, low income — derived from AMI with statutory floors and caps.
see alsoArea Median Income
The primary federal subsidy for affordable rental production, delivered through the tax code and administered by state housing agencies under a QAP. Treasury and IRS, not HUD.
why it matters hereThe largest affordable-housing program in the country is a tax expenditure. A pipeline that looks only at HUD will miss it entirely, and its delegations run to IRS.
see alsoQAP Agency acronyms
A demonstration giving selected PHAs waiver authority and funding fungibility in exchange for evaluation. Expanded by adding cohorts.
see alsoPublic housing agency RAD
Assistance attached to a property rather than a household, under long-term contracts with owners.
The local entity administering public housing and vouchers. Roughly 3,000 nationally, and the implementation layer between a federal rule and a household.
why it matters herePHAs are the last mile, and their capacity varies enormously. A federal program change lands unevenly for reasons that are structural rather than political.
see alsoHousing Choice Voucher Moving to Work
The state-level plan governing how LIHTC credits are awarded. Where federal law becomes a set of fifty different state priorities.
see alsoLIHTC
Converts public housing and other legacy assistance to long-term project-based contracts, enabling private capital for recapitalization. Operates under a unit cap set by statute.
why it matters hereA statutory unit cap is a clean, countable, dated observable. Raising a cap is a provision whose implementation status is a number, not a judgment.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, enacted 11 July 2026 as Pub. L. 119-101 via H.R. 6644, becoming law without the President's signature. Descended from S. 2651, the ROAD to Housing Act of 2025 (Scott/Warren), reported by Senate Banking 24-0. Nine titles. First statutory deadline 7 January 2027.
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why it matters hereDownstream's first card corpus. Its provisions were stripped from the FY26 NDAA, declared dead, and resurfaced six months later in a new vehicle — the zombie mechanic, documented, on the first bill in the system.
see alsoZombie provision Vehicle Provision
The rental assistance authority covering both tenant-based vouchers and project-based assistance. Section 8 refers to a statutory section, not a single program.
see alsoHousing Choice Voucher Project-based rental assistance
Vocabulary this system introduces or uses in a specific way. Defined here so that internal and external usage cannot drift.
The date a claim is true as of. Present on every query, every card, every chart, and every export, in mono, on the surface.
why it matters hereAn artifact without a visible
as_ofis malformed. This is not a style preference; it is the only thing that makes a claim checkable a year later.
see alsoPoint-in-time Bitemporal
The historical frequency of an outcome in a comparable class. A Layer 1 fact about the past, not a forecast about the present.
why it matters hereStating a base rate is reporting. Applying it to a specific pending obligation is forecasting. The card does the first and not the second, and the line between them is exactly one sentence wide.
see alsoCalibration Layer 1 Layer 2
Storing both when a fact was true in the world (valid_from / valid_to) and when the system learned it (recorded_at). Enables answering what did we believe on that date as well as what was true.
see alsoPoint-in-time as_of
Everything a change silently touches through cross-references and defined terms, without any of it being amended.
see alsoDefinitional amendment Cross-reference Notwithstanding any other provision of law
The mean squared error of probabilistic forecasts. Decomposes into calibration, resolution, and uncertainty.
see alsoCalibration
Whether stated probabilities match observed frequencies — of the things called 70% likely, did about 70% happen. Distinct from accuracy, and the property this system is actually built to have.
see alsoBrier score Base rate The Ledger
What Downstream states instead of a recommendation: who is affected, by what mechanism, on what timeline, under what conditions. Never buy, sell, should, or the right move is.
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Layer 1 vocabulary. Definitions are of terms of art, not legal advice, and the citations point at the authority rather than standing in for it. Where a term is contested, this file says so rather than picking a side. Corrections belong in the same typeface as the entries.
why it matters hereA legal constraint before it is a style rule. The publisher's exemption depends on it, and it is enforced at the schema level, not just in copy.
see alsoLayer 2
The deterministic, open, fully citable statutory graph: provisions, mechanisms, identifiers, cross-references, the observed record. Free by design.
why it matters hereA card carries Layer 1 only. That is what makes it shareable without anyone having to trust a forecast, and it is enforced in the generation pipeline rather than asserted as a value.
see alsoLayer 2 Provision The Ledger
The probabilistic transition model on top of Layer 1 — implementation hazard, litigation survival, magnitude, timing. Proprietary, and never on a card.
see alsoLayer 1 Calibration Exposure
The classification of what a provision does — delegation, authorization, preemption, private right of action, definitional amendment, appropriation, sunset, trigger. Each type has a different downstream signature.
see alsoProvision Delegation Preemption
The set of provisions that were considered and did not survive. Usually invisible, frequently more informative than what passed.
see alsoZombie provision Silent
Reconstructing what was known at a past moment, using the data as it existed then rather than as it has since been revised. ALFRED vintages rather than FRED; eCFR versions rather than current text.
why it matters hereWithout it, backtests leak future information and every calibration number is fiction. It is the first of the three constraints that do not loosen.
see alsoBitemporal as_of eCFR
The atomic unit. Not the bill. A single leaf clause with one identifiable legal mechanism, classified by mechanism type and carrying its own identifier.
why it matters hereThis is the central insight of the whole system. Bills are heterogeneous bundles; provisions are typed objects with downstream signatures you can fit a model on. Everything else follows from taking the unit seriously.
see alsoMechanism type Provision ID Lineage ID
The machine-checkable query, written before the forecast, that will determine whether it came true.
why it matters hereif you can't write the resolution query before making the forecast, it isn't a forecast. This is the rule that separates this from the unfalsifiable confidence the category runs on.
see alsoThe Ledger Calibration
A status: no observable action of any kind. Not a gap — a finding. Renders as a dash, never as zero.
why it matters hereConflating silent with zero is the error a chart makes invisible, and it is the difference between an agency that did nothing and an agency we did not observe.
see alsoOrphaned delegation Negative space
The public, append-only, externally anchored record of every claim and forecast with its eventual resolution. Includes the misses, in the same typeface as the hits.
see alsoResolution query Brier score Calibration
A provision that was stripped, failed, or sunset, and later reappeared in another vehicle. The tracker follows them by lineage_id and text similarity across bills.
see alsoByrd rule Vehicle Lineage ID Sunset