Only a small fraction of the bills and resolutions introduced will ever be voted on. How do you know which bills to pay attention to? Now on GovTrack you can find a bill’s prognosis.

We can’t predict the future, but we can highlight factors that favor a bill’s progress. Check out H.Con.Res. 112 for example. Below the bill status chart in the middle of the page you’ll now find Prognosis. We’ll list there whether the bill’s sponsor is the chair of the committee considering the bill and whether any cosponsors of the bill are on the committee. Committees are where bills come for their real judgement. If a committee chair introduces a bill that gets assigned to his own committee, that bill is likely to be important.

Having support from other members of the committee is helpful as well. On the page for S. 2170 we list three relevant factors: the chair of the committee that the bill has been referred to is a cosponsor of the bill, the sponsor of the bill is on that committee, and one other cosponsor is also on that committee.

If no favorable factors are present, the prognosis section is omitted.