Understanding the Output

You will need: congress-approp installed, access to the data/ directory.

You will learn: How to read every table the tool produces — what each column means, what the symbols indicate, and how to interpret the numbers.

Before diving into tutorials and specific tasks, let’s build a solid understanding of the output formats you’ll encounter. Every command in congress-approp uses consistent conventions, but the tables adapt their shape depending on what you’re looking at.

The Summary Table

The summary command gives you the bird’s-eye view:

congress-approp summary --dir data

┌───────────┬───────────────────────┬────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┐
│ Bill      ┆ Classification        ┆ Provisions ┆ Budget Auth ($) ┆ Rescissions ($) ┆      Net BA ($) │
╞═══════════╪═══════════════════════╪════════════╪═════════════════╪═════════════════╪═════════════════╡
│ H.R. 4366 ┆ Omnibus               ┆       2364 ┆ 846,137,099,554 ┆  24,659,349,709 ┆ 821,477,749,845 │
│ H.R. 5860 ┆ Continuing Resolution ┆        130 ┆  16,000,000,000 ┆               0 ┆  16,000,000,000 │
│ H.R. 9468 ┆ Supplemental          ┆          7 ┆   2,882,482,000 ┆               0 ┆   2,882,482,000 │
│ TOTAL     ┆                       ┆       2501 ┆ 865,019,581,554 ┆  24,659,349,709 ┆ 840,360,231,845 │
└───────────┴───────────────────────┴────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┘

0 dollar amounts unverified across all bills. Run `congress-approp audit` for detailed verification.

Column-by-column

The footer

The line below the table — “0 dollar amounts unverified across all bills” — is a quick trust check. It counts provisions across all loaded bills where the dollar amount string was not found in the source bill text. Zero means every extracted number was confirmed against the source. If this number is ever greater than zero, the audit command will show you exactly which provisions need review.

By-agency view

Add --by-agency to see budget authority broken down by parent department:

congress-approp summary --dir data --by-agency

This appends a second table showing every agency, its total budget authority, rescissions, and provision count, sorted by budget authority descending. For example, Department of Veterans Affairs shows ~$343B (which includes mandatory programs like Compensation and Pensions that appear as appropriation lines in the bill text).

The Search Table

The search command produces tables that adapt their columns based on what you’re searching for. This is one of the most important things to understand about the output.

Standard search table

For most searches, you see this layout:

congress-approp search --dir data/118-hr9468

┌───┬───────────┬───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬──────────┬─────┐
│ $ ┆ Bill      ┆ Type          ┆ Description / Account                         ┆    Amount ($) ┆ Section  ┆ Div │
╞═══╪═══════════╪═══════════════╪═══════════════════════════════════════════════╪═══════════════╪══════════╪═════╡
│ ✓ ┆ H.R. 9468 ┆ appropriation ┆ Compensation and Pensions                     ┆ 2,285,513,000 ┆          ┆     │
│ ✓ ┆ H.R. 9468 ┆ appropriation ┆ Readjustment Benefits                         ┆   596,969,000 ┆          ┆     │
│   ┆ H.R. 9468 ┆ rider         ┆ Establishes that each amount appropriated o…  ┆             — ┆ SEC. 101 ┆     │
│   ┆ H.R. 9468 ┆ rider         ┆ Unless otherwise provided, the additional a…  ┆             — ┆ SEC. 102 ┆     │
│   ┆ H.R. 9468 ┆ directive     ┆ Requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs …  ┆             — ┆ SEC. 103 ┆     │
│   ┆ H.R. 9468 ┆ directive     ┆ Requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs …  ┆             — ┆ SEC. 103 ┆     │
│   ┆ H.R. 9468 ┆ directive     ┆ Requires the Inspector General of the Depar…  ┆             — ┆ SEC. 104 ┆     │
└───┴───────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴──────────┴─────┘
7 provisions found

The $ column — verification symbols

The leftmost column tells you the verification status of each provision’s dollar amount:

CR substitution table

When you search for cr_substitution type provisions, the table automatically changes shape to show the old and new amounts:

congress-approp search --dir data/118-hr5860 --type cr_substitution

┌───┬───────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬──────────────┬──────────┬─────┐
│ $ ┆ Bill      ┆ Account                                  ┆       New ($) ┆       Old ($) ┆    Delta ($) ┆ Section  ┆ Div │
╞═══╪═══════════╪══════════════════════════════════════════╪═══════════════╪═══════════════╪══════════════╪══════════╪═════╡
│ ✓ ┆ H.R. 5860 ┆ Rural Housing Service—Rural Community…   ┆    25,300,000 ┆    75,300,000 ┆  -50,000,000 ┆ SEC. 101 ┆ A   │
│ ...                                                                                                                      │
│ ✓ ┆ H.R. 5860 ┆ Office of Personnel Management—Salari…   ┆   219,076,000 ┆   190,784,000 ┆  +28,292,000 ┆ SEC. 126 ┆ A   │
└───┴───────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴──────────────┴──────────┴─────┘
13 provisions found

Instead of a single Amount column, you get:

Semantic search table

When you use --semantic or --similar, a Sim (similarity) column appears at the left:

┌──────┬───────────┬───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────┬─────┐
│ Sim  ┆ Bill      ┆ Type          ┆ Description / Account                 ┆     Amount ($) ┆ Div │
╞══════╪═══════════╪═══════════════╪═══════════════════════════════════════╪════════════════╪═════╡
│ 0.51 ┆ H.R. 4366 ┆ appropriation ┆ Child Nutrition Programs              ┆ 33,266,226,000 ┆ B   │
│ 0.46 ┆ H.R. 4366 ┆ appropriation ┆ Child Nutrition Programs              ┆     10,000,000 ┆ B   │
└──────┴───────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────┴─────┘

The Sim score is the cosine similarity between your query and the provision’s embedding vector, ranging from 0 to 1:

Results are sorted by similarity descending and limited to --top N (default 20).

The Audit Table

The audit command provides the most detailed quality view:

congress-approp audit --dir data

┌───────────┬────────────┬──────────┬──────────┬───────┬───────┬──────────┬───────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│ Bill      ┆ Provisions ┆ Verified ┆ NotFound ┆ Ambig ┆ Exact ┆ NormText ┆ Spaceless ┆ TextMiss ┆ Coverage │
╞═══════════╪════════════╪══════════╪══════════╪═══════╪═══════╪══════════╪═══════════╪══════════╪══════════╡
│ H.R. 4366 ┆       2364 ┆      762 ┆        0 ┆   723 ┆  2285 ┆       59 ┆         0 ┆       20 ┆    94.2% │
│ H.R. 5860 ┆        130 ┆       33 ┆        0 ┆     2 ┆   102 ┆       12 ┆         0 ┆       16 ┆    61.1% │
│ H.R. 9468 ┆          7 ┆        2 ┆        0 ┆     0 ┆     5 ┆        0 ┆         0 ┆        2 ┆   100.0% │
│ TOTAL     ┆       2501 ┆      797 ┆        0 ┆   725 ┆  2392 ┆       71 ┆         0 ┆       38 ┆          │
└───────────┴────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴───────┴───────┴──────────┴───────────┴──────────┴──────────┘

The audit table has two groups of columns: amount verification (left side) and text verification (right side).

Amount verification columns

These check whether the dollar amount string (e.g., "$2,285,513,000") exists in the source bill text:

The sum of Verified + Ambig equals the total number of provisions that have dollar amounts. NotFound should always be zero. Across the included example data, it is.

Text verification columns

These check whether the raw_text excerpt (the first ~150 characters of the bill language for each provision) is a substring of the source text:

Coverage column

Coverage is the percentage of all dollar-sign patterns found in the source bill text that were matched to an extracted provision. This measures completeness, not accuracy.

• 100% (H.R. 9468): Every dollar amount in the source was captured — perfect.
• 94.2% (H.R. 4366): Most dollar amounts were captured. The remaining 5.8% are typically statutory cross-references, loan guarantee ceilings, or old amounts being struck by amendments — dollar figures that appear in the text but aren’t independent provisions.
• 61.1% (H.R. 5860): Lower coverage is expected for continuing resolutions because most of the bill text consists of references to prior-year appropriations acts, which contain many dollar amounts that are contextual references, not new provisions.

Coverage below 100% does not mean the extracted numbers are wrong. It means the bill text contains dollar strings that aren’t captured as provisions. See What Coverage Means (and Doesn’t) for a detailed explanation.

Quick decision guide

After running audit, here’s how to interpret the results:

The Compare Table

The compare command shows account-level differences between two sets of bills:

congress-approp compare --base data/118-hr4366 --current data/118-hr9468

┌─────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────┬─────────────────┬───────────────┬──────────────────┬─────────┬──────────────┐
│ Account                             ┆ Agency               ┆        Base ($) ┆   Current ($) ┆        Delta ($) ┆     Δ % ┆ Status       │
╞═════════════════════════════════════╪══════════════════════╪═════════════════╪═══════════════╪══════════════════╪═════════╪══════════════╡
│ Compensation and Pensions           ┆ Department of Veter… ┆ 197,382,903,000 ┆ 2,285,513,000 ┆ -195,097,390,000 ┆  -98.8% ┆ changed      │
│ Readjustment Benefits               ┆ Department of Veter… ┆  13,774,657,000 ┆   596,969,000 ┆  -13,177,688,000 ┆  -95.7% ┆ changed      │
│ ...                                                                                                                                       │
│ Supplemental Nutrition Assistance … ┆ Department of Agric… ┆ 122,382,521,000 ┆             0 ┆ -122,382,521,000 ┆ -100.0% ┆ only in base │
└─────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────┴──────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────┘

Results are sorted by the absolute value of Delta, largest changes first.

Interpreting cross-type comparisons: When comparing an omnibus to a supplemental (as above), most accounts will show “only in base” because the supplemental only touches a few accounts. The tool warns you about this: “Comparing Omnibus to Supplemental. Accounts in one but not the other may be expected.” The compare command is most informative when comparing bills of the same type — for example, an FY2023 omnibus to an FY2024 omnibus.

Output Formats

Every query command supports four output formats via --format:

Table (default)

congress-approp search --dir data/118-hr9468 --format table

Human-readable formatted table. Best for interactive use and quick exploration. Column widths adapt to content. Long text is truncated.

JSON

congress-approp search --dir data/118-hr9468 --format json

A JSON array of objects. Includes every field for each matching provision — more data than the table shows. Best for programmatic consumption, piping to jq, or loading into scripts.

JSONL (JSON Lines)

congress-approp search --dir data/118-hr9468 --format jsonl

One JSON object per line, no enclosing array. Best for streaming processing, piping to while read, or working with very large result sets. Each line is independently parseable.

CSV

congress-approp search --dir data/118-hr9468 --format csv > provisions.csv

Comma-separated values suitable for importing into Excel, Google Sheets, R, or pandas. Includes a header row. Dollar amounts are plain integers (not formatted with commas).

Tip: When exporting to CSV for Excel, make sure to import the file with UTF-8 encoding. Some bill text contains em-dashes (—) and other Unicode characters that may display incorrectly with the default Windows encoding.

For a detailed guide with examples and recipes for each format, see Output Formats.

Provision Types at a Glance

You’ll encounter these provision types throughout the tool. Use --list-types for a quick reference:

congress-approp search --dir data --list-types

Available provision types:
  appropriation                    Budget authority grant
  rescission                       Cancellation of prior budget authority
  cr_substitution                  CR anomaly (substituting $X for $Y)
  transfer_authority               Permission to move funds between accounts
  limitation                       Cap or prohibition on spending
  directed_spending                Earmark / community project funding
  mandatory_spending_extension     Amendment to authorizing statute
  directive                        Reporting requirement or instruction
  rider                            Policy provision (no direct spending)
  continuing_resolution_baseline   Core CR funding mechanism
  other                            Unclassified provisions

The distribution varies by bill type. In the FY2024 omnibus (H.R. 4366), the breakdown is:

The continuing resolution (H.R. 5860) has a very different profile: 49 riders, 44 mandatory spending extensions, 13 CR substitutions, and only 5 standalone appropriations. This reflects the CR’s structure — it mostly continues prior-year funding rather than setting new levels.

For detailed documentation of each provision type including all fields and real examples, see Provision Types.

Enriched Output

When you run congress-approp enrich --dir data (no API key needed), the tool generates bill metadata that enhances the output:

• Enriched classifications — the summary table shows “Full-Year CR with Appropriations” instead of “Continuing Resolution” for hybrid bills like H.R. 1968, and “Minibus” instead of “Omnibus” for bills covering only 2–4 subcommittees.
• Advance appropriation split — use --show-advance on summary to separate current-year spending from advance appropriations (money enacted now but available in a future fiscal year). This is critical for VA accounts where 79.5% of MilCon-VA budget authority is advance.
• Fiscal year and subcommittee filtering — use --fy 2026 and --subcommittee thud to scope any command to a specific year and jurisdiction, automatically resolving division letters across bills.

See Enrich Bills with Metadata for the full guide.

Next Steps

Related chapters:

• Enrich Bills with Metadata — enable FY filtering, subcommittee scoping, and advance splits
• Find How Much Congress Spent on a Topic — your first real research task
• Compare Two Bills — see what changed between bills
• Track a Program Across Bills — trace one account across fiscal years
• Filter and Search Provisions — all the search flags in one place