"Ordered to Be Reported" and Reporting a Bill

Part of the Bill Explainer plain-language guide to Congress · last reviewed September 18, 2026

These two actions often appear weeks apart and mean different things:

Ordered to be Reported (Amended) by Voice Vote.

Reported by the Committee on Education and the Workforce. H. Rept. 119-142.

The first is the committee's decision. The second is the committee formally delivering the bill, with its accompanying written report, to the chamber. A bill is not available for floor action until it has actually been reported, so the gap between the two is a real gap.

"Ordered to be reported"

At the end of a markup, the committee votes on a motion to report the bill. If it carries, the bill has been ordered reported. The action text usually tells you three useful things:

• Whether it was amended. "(Amended)" means the committee changed the text, so the introduced version is out of date.
• How it was decided. "by Voice Vote" suggests no member demanded a tally, which usually — though not always — indicates limited controversy. A recorded vote count instead of "voice vote" tells you the split.
• Whether it was favorable. Committees almost always report favorably. It is technically possible to report a bill without recommendation, or unfavorably, but it is rare in modern practice.

What the committee report contains

The written report is one of the most underused documents in Washington, and it is public. A typical report includes a section-by-section explanation of what the bill does, the committee's stated purpose and need, the legislative history of the committee's consideration, a record of amendment votes, a Congressional Budget Office cost estimate, and often "minority views" or "additional views" written by members who disagree with parts of the majority's account.

If you want to understand a significant bill and have time for exactly one document, the committee report is frequently more useful than the bill text, because it explains intent in prose rather than in amendatory instructions. Reports are numbered by chamber and Congress — H. Rept. 119-142 is the 142nd House report of the 119th Congress — and are available on Congress.gov.

Why the delay between the two actions

Writing the report takes staff time, the CBO cost estimate may not be finished, and the committee has to finalize the exact text incorporating everything adopted at markup. Weeks are normal. Very occasionally a bill is ordered reported and never actually reported, which effectively kills it without anyone having to vote against it.

What reporting does and does not accomplish

Being reported makes a bill eligible for floor consideration. In the House it is placed on one of the calendars, most often the Union Calendar; in the Senate it goes on the Calendar of Business. Neither is a schedule. Leadership decides what actually gets floor time, and the supply of floor time is far smaller than the supply of reported bills.

So the honest reading of "Reported by the Committee on …" is: this bill has cleared a real hurdle that most bills never clear, and it is now waiting in line behind a lot of other bills that also cleared it.

Related explainers

Sources

These are the authoritative, nonpartisan references behind this explainer. All are free to the public, and all go into far more detail than we do.

• Reporting a Measure from a Senate Committee (98-246) — Congressional Research Service
• How Measures Are Brought to the House Floor: A Brief Introduction (RS20067) — Congressional Research Service
• Glossary of Legislative Terms — Congress.gov