For every law being considered, the U.S. House of Representatives is required to produce a Ramseyer Report showing the potential impact upon existing law. The Senate calls their version of such a report a Cordon Report. The software tool developed to produce these reports electronically is what is now called Legislative Impact.
Starting from a highly tagged XML data set and combining sophisticated programming with manual review, Legislative Impact produces the reports that you access through Potomac Publishing. Legislative Impact begins with language in the law that describes how the new law would amend existing law:
In this example, the Legislative Impact table will contain four entries - one for each of the instructions numbered (1) through (4). By displaying referenced citations as hypertext links, the system allows the reader immediate access to the amended documents.
Legislative Impact tables are built dynamically so they are never out of date. Each time you request an Impact result, the table is built from the data set currently available.
NOTE: The system notes changes in the Legislative Impact table only when a document specifically references some kind of modification, such as an amendment or repeal.