Economic Stimulus Bill Text Tracker

This is a special GovTrack feature! We've gathered a few drafts of what's currently the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, H.R. 3997, the $700 billion "bail-out" bill, and are highlighting below the changes made from one draft to the next. We hope this makes it easier to understand what's happening right now in Congress.

(You can also find on GovTrack the failed roll call for the Sept 28 bill. More data here will come as it is published. Bear with us while the site copes from unusually high traffic with all of the interest in reading H.R. 3997.)

Here are the comparisons we have available:

• Comparison 1 between:

  a draft posted Thursday, September 25 (AYO08B68, PDF), and

  a draft posted Saturday, September 27 (but dated the 28th) (AYO08B94, PDF)

• Comparison 2 between:

  a draft posted Saturday, September 27 (but dated the 28th) (AYO08B94, PDF), and

  a draft posted Sunday, September 28 (AYO08C04, PDF)

• Comparison 3 between:

  a draft posted Sunday, September 28 (AYO08C04, PDF), and

  the text of the plan as of September 28 at 9:10pm, which failed House vote on Monday, September 29 (an amendment to set the text of H.R. 3997) (AMEND001, PDF)

• Comparison 4 between:

  the text of the plan as of September 28 at 9:10pm, which failed House vote on Monday, September 29 (an amendment to set the text of H.R. 3997) (AMEND001, PDF), and

  the text of the bill H.R. 1424 approved by the Senate the night of Wednesday, October 1 (AYO08C32, PDF)

A hat tip to John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation for suggesting a tool like this on the mail list of The Open House Project.

If you have a PDF for another draft, send it to me at and I will add a new comparison.