2026年5月22日 / 美国东部时间早上6:00 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
华盛顿讯 每当国会召开会议的每个夜晚，国会大厦附近一栋庞大的红砖建筑里，数十名工作人员都会完成一项鲜为人知的壮举，为国会历史写下第一份草稿。
这栋建筑的核心区域是一片开阔的大空间，挑高天花板，裸露的管道和椽子。明亮的工业级灯光照亮了堪比小型货车大小的印刷机，巨大的纸卷在机器中飞速运转。机器持续不断的轰鸣声中，不时穿插着电子设备的蜂鸣和运转声。
这里是美国政府出版局（GPO）的所在地，该机构负责出版《国会记录》。自1873年以来，《国会记录》一直是最完整的每日记录，完整呈现国会山民选代表的工作成果与未尽事宜，以精准的格式和细致的编辑，记录立法过程中的长篇发言和平凡日常。
这项出版工作是国会机器中一个不为人知的齿轮——知晓者寥寥，却依赖者众多。整个流程从众议院和参议院议事厅内的发言开始，大部分汇编工作都在华盛顿其他人熟睡时完成。最终成品会低调地像报纸一样被送到国会山的门阶上。
以下是它的制作全过程。
一份“近乎逐字逐句”的国会记录
![近期出版的《国会记录》。凯亚·哈伯德 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻]
从1789年第一届国会到1873年《国会记录》首次出版前，有关立法部门内部运作的信息少之又少。零星的报纸报道拼凑出了议事厅 proceedings 的碎片化记录。
“当时人们迫切想要了解国会议事厅里发生的事情，”参议院历史学家助理丹尼尔·霍尔特说道，“问题在于，当时没有一套完善的机制来实现这一点。”
多家出版物试图填补这一空白，其运作模式与如今记者和国会议员之间的关系截然不同。曾有一位知名记者在参议院议事厅里与副总统共用鼻烟盒。
最终，对国会山事件报道不完整、带有党派偏见的不满，推动了建立更正式记录机制的呼声。1873年3月5日，美国政府出版局出版了第一份《国会记录》，致力于完整记录众议院和参议院的议事过程。
“几乎没有任何文件比《国会记录》更重要，”时任参议院多数党领袖林登·B·约翰逊在1956年说道。
“其中封存着辩论、决议、法案、提案、请愿书以及立法行动，而这些正是参议院[和众议院]存在的意义，”约翰逊说道，“这份文件影响着我们的法律、判例和司法判决。”
![20世纪初，华盛顿时任政府印刷局内，一名印刷工正在监控印刷机。FPG / 盖蒂图片社]
它并不刻意吸引读者。《国会记录》采用11×8.5英寸纸张印刷，带有正式封面，上面印有美国国玺。其厚度取决于前一天国会的议事活跃程度。4月29日，参众两院都在召开会议，《国会记录》厚达233页。5月4日，两院都处于休会状态，仅举行形式上的会议，《国会记录》仅有22页。
整本记录分为四个部分，提供“近乎逐字逐句”的国会山活动记录，涵盖每个议事厅内的所有发言和行动，每页分为三栏。它设有“每日摘要”板块，汇总议事厅行动和委员会会议情况，还有“延伸发言”板块，允许众议院议员提交他们并未在议事厅口头发表的言论——比如向高中运动队致敬、分享喜爱的食谱、纪念周年活动等等。
收录未在议事厅发表的言论数十年来一直是争议的焦点，这也凸显了哪些内容能被纳入《国会记录》、哪些不能的重要性。1972年，路易斯安那州众议员黑尔·博格斯在一场空难中丧生。两天后，一篇署有他名字的演讲出现在了《国会记录》中。
“他显然不可能在去世两天后发表这番讲话，他是在离开小镇前安排好的，”霍尔特说道，“但这引发了一个问题：‘好吧，《国会记录》里的内容到底是什么，它和国会议事厅里实际发生的发言有什么关系？’”
参众两院随后实施了格式调整，以标明哪些演讲是被添加到记录中的。但议员们可以绕过这些规定：只需在议事厅先发表部分发言，其余内容之后再提交收录。20世纪80年代又出台了进一步改革措施。
“当时的规则基本明确，演讲仍可为清晰表达等目的进行编辑，但不得修改实质内容，”霍尔特说道。
1979年众议院引入摄像机、1986年参议院引入摄像机后，《国会记录》不再是议事厅内部运作的唯一记录载体。但它仍能为读者提供更全面的议事全貌。
“归根结底，它的宗旨始终未变，就是为读者提供尽可能全面的记录，涵盖相关议题、辩论以及立法过程中的各种不同观点，”霍尔特说道。
《国会记录》的制作流程
如今，《国会记录》的制作流程始于国会山，每个议事厅的每一次发言和行动都会被全程记录。
当议员发言时，轮班的现场记者会用速记记下每一个字。在参议院议事厅，人们可以看到他们脖子上挂着速录机，熟练地在议员间穿梭。他们以15分钟为一轮班，每分钟可录入225个单词。
在议事厅外，记者们会与被称为“文字校对员”的编辑合作，将速记笔记转化为正式文稿。每15分钟的议事时间，在众议院需要约一个半小时的处理时间，在参议院则需要两到三个小时。后续还会进行多轮编辑，最终将记录稿与投票结果、委员会报告和其他材料汇编在一起。
随后，流程转移到北国会街沿线的美国政府出版局总部，约70名员工参与最终产品的交付工作。该局曾是世界上最大的印刷工厂，其总部位于一栋1903年建造的七层红砖罗马式复兴风格建筑内。该建筑的所在地正是1861年亚伯拉罕·林肯就职日当天政府出版局成立时的旧址。
![华盛顿美国政府出版局总部。阿贾伊·苏雷什 / Flickr]
国会山完成编辑后，专业团队会将材料以数字和纸质两种形式发送给政府出版局。信使会在下午和晚间将一摞摞文件从国会山送到出版局。
文件送达时，经常会带有手写在页边空白处或便签上的修改指示。如果出现不一致的情况，纸质版本将作为最终依据。
“具有记录效力的文件是纸质版本，”政府出版局局长休·哈尔彭在近期的设施参观中告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，“他们那边投入了大量电脑和软件之类的东西，但归根结底，如果你要寻找真相的源头，那就是纸质文件。”
政府出版局的国会客户服务办公室负责接收来自国会山的材料。这是一个不起眼的办公空间。墙上时钟下方的一块公告板会记录各议事厅休会时间、稿件接收情况和收到的页数。最重要的是，它会标明参众两院下次开会的时间。政府出版局的目标是在议员次日上午到场前完成《国会记录》的制作。
![美国政府出版局的一块公告板追踪《国会记录》的制作进度。凯亚·哈伯德 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻]
“我们要确保《国会记录》按时出版——这是我们的首要任务，”在客户服务办公室工作的娜塔莉亚·帕尼扬说道。
工作人员会与官方记者和立法书记员沟通，确认所有文件都已收齐。随后文件会被送到校对室，工作人员的任务是梳理从国会山送来的成堆文件。他们会将纸质页面与数字文件进行比对，并标注格式修改指令，然后进行新一轮校正。
走进校对室，就像进入了一个过时的新闻编辑室，堆积如山的文件上布满红色批注，工作人员正一丝不苟地审阅每一页。校对室每天24小时运转，每周工作五到六天。
校对室的《国会记录》工作从傍晚开始。大部分工作在下午3:30到次日早上6:00之间进行。工作人员整个晚上会收到来自各议事厅的多批稿件。他们会从“取件柜台”领取稿件，开始标注流程。校对员会使用一系列红色印章标注页面上的所有风格元素，严格遵循《国会记录》各部分的复杂格式规则。
在一块标有“改进机会”的公告板上，打印出来的提示提醒校对员避免常见错误：“众议员布里塔尼·彼得森，拼写为Pettersen，而非Petterson”，其中一页写道。另一页提醒校对员注意，当单独提及众议员奇普·罗伊的名字时，首字母需要大写。标有“参议院”“众议院”和“摘要”的分类桶挂在桌边，用于收集对应页面。
![美国政府出版局的一名校对员正在比对带有格式批注的页面和最终版本。凯亚·哈伯德 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻]
“从事这种极其注重细节的工作，需要具备特定的技能、专注力，坦率地说，还需要合适的性格，”哈尔彭说道。
到当晚第三班工作人员到岗时，“整个场面就像一支管弦乐队，”其中一名校对员达琳·里奥斯-贝说道，“每个人都各司其职。”
校对室的其他工作人员会将格式信息录入电子文件，确保两者一致，随后文件会被上传至网络并送往印刷厂。
政府出版局大楼的另一层是印刷车间。这是一个巨大的空间，人们必须提高嗓门才能盖过机器的轰鸣声。暖纸和油墨的气味交织在一起。尽管使用的是现代化机器，但这里的历史感依然浓厚——墙面是褪色的砖块和瓷砖，空间的设计原本是为了容纳一排排厚重的金属轮转印刷机。高耸的窗户用于采光，照亮整个车间。
![美国政府出版局内印刷《国会记录》的区域。凯亚·哈伯德 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻]
三台不同类型的机器负责印刷《国会记录》。其中一台打印机吐出厚实的米白色封面，另一台将巨大的轻质纸卷送入印刷机，制作记录的双面内页。这台机器每分钟可印刷数千页。第三台机器负责裁切、折叠和装订每一份副本，制作出类似杂志的《国会记录》，将成品整齐地堆叠出来，等待配送。
![等待送往国会山的成品《国会记录》。凯亚·哈伯德 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻]
过去十年内，印刷流程发生了变革。过去的传统印刷机需要8到9名操作人员，还要制作金属印版，产生大量废料。如今的数字喷墨技术仅需两名工人即可操作。哈尔彭表示，这个流程“随着时间推移不断发展”。
“它始于19世纪60年代政府出版局成立之初——我们就在这个地方起步，当时靠手工排版，”他说道，“而到了今天，流程已基本实现数字化。”
“不会消失”
1970年，政府出版局每天印刷近5万份《国会记录》，使用36卷纸，总重量超过20吨。哈尔彭表示，这一数字在20世纪80年代和90年代下降到每天约2.5万份。如今，这一数量约为1500份。
其中大部分副本被送往图书馆和其他机构。但哈尔彭表示，“我们的主要客户是国会山——国会。”
“那里仍有一些人使用纸质版本，但大多数情况下，他们都是通过我们的数字文件开展工作，”他说道。
政府出版局拥有强大的数字平台govinfo.gov，作为联邦政府三个分支的数字资料库。哈尔彭表示，尽管很多人认为该机构专注于纸质产品，但他们的大部分工作都 firmly 立足于21世纪。
“我们会进行文档转换。国会会向我们提供各类文件，无论是法案、《国会记录》的一部分还是其他任何内容，我们都会将其转换为数字文件，”他说道，“最终我们会以两种方式输出这些数字文件：要么上传到网络，要么制作纸质版本。”
除了《国会记录》，政府出版局还出版多种其他产品，包括美国护照、《联邦公报》、总统预算案以及官方口袋版《宪法》。
展望未来，哈尔彭承认，《国会记录》可能需要与时俱进进行变革。
“这是一个复杂的流程。它一直在演变，坦率地说，它不会消失，我们需要构想下一代、新版《国会记录》会是什么样子，”哈尔彭说道，“我们还没有做到这一点，这是我们在工作中悄悄探讨的话题，但我们已经在进行相关投资。”
![2025年4月29日，美国政府出版局局长休·哈尔彭在国会山。奇普·索莫德维拉 / 盖蒂图片社]
政府出版局的工作方向由国会决定。哈尔彭表示，他们已经进行了投资，确保随时可以响应国会山的需求。该机构正在对其出版系统进行现代化改造，以简化文档转换流程，并逐步淘汰哈尔彭称在他12岁时就已推出的旧软件。
“我早就过了12岁了，”他说道，“所以我们正在更换这款软件。”
哈尔彭表示，他经常被问到有关人工智能的问题，但“我们尚未找到能够替代训练有素的校对员的技术。”
“最终，我希望能有一款类似加强版语法检查工具的程序，帮助校对员完成部分常规工作，”他说道，“但我们仍未找到合适的替代品，无法替代这些经过高度培训的人工审核环节。”
站在印刷车间的广阔空间里，哈尔彭的声音盖过了机器的轰鸣声，他表示，这项工作的演变“是一段旅程”。
“我们仍在这段旅程中，”他说道，“但方向是正确的。”
Inside the making of the Congressional Record: How history gets recorded as D.C. sleeps
May 22, 2026 / 6:00 AM EDT / CBS News
Washington — Every night that Congress is in session, dozens of workers inside a hulking red-brick building blocks away from the Capitol pull off an unheralded feat, laying down the first draft of the history of Congress.
At the heart of the building is a wide-open expanse, with tall ceilings and exposed ducts and rafters. Bright, industrial-strength lights illuminate printers the size of minivans, with enormous rolls of paper flying through them. The constant din of the machines is punctuated by electronic chirps and whirs.
The building houses the Government Publishing Office, the agency responsible for producing the Congressional Record. Since 1873, the Record has served as the most complete daily account of what the people’s representatives on Capitol Hill accomplished, or didn’t, chronicling the monologues and the mundanities of the legislative process with precise formatting and meticulous editing.
Its production is one of the unseen cogs in the congressional machine — known by few, but depended upon by many. The process begins with the words spoken on the floor of the House and Senate. The work to compile it largely happens as the rest of Washington sleeps. It arrives, with little fanfare, like a newspaper on the Capitol’s doorstep every day.
This is how it comes together.
A “substantially verbatim” account of Congress
Recent copies of the Congressional Record. Kaia Hubbard / CBS News
Between the first Congress in 1789 and the lead-up to the Congressional Record’s first publication in 1873, information on the internal workings of the legislative branch was sparse. A smattering of coverage by newspaper reporters made up a piecemeal account of the floor proceedings.
“There was definitely a demand for what was going on on the floor of Congress,” said Daniel Holt, an associate Senate historian. “The problem was that there wasn’t a mechanism in place.”
A number of publications sought to fill that void, operating with a notably different dynamic than is shared between reporters and lawmakers today. One prominent newsman shared a snuff box with the vice president on the Senate floor.
Ultimately, frustration with incomplete and partisan accounts of what happened in the Capitol fueled a push for a more formal operation. On March 5, 1873, the Government Publishing Office produced the first copy of the Congressional Record, dedicated to chronicling what happened in the House and Senate.
There are “few documents more important than the Congressional Record,” Lyndon B. Johnson, then the Senate majority leader, said in 1956.
“Locked in its pages are the debate, the resolutions, the bills, the memorials, the petitions, and the legislative actions that are the reason for the existence of the Senate [and the House],” Johnson said. “It is a document which affects our laws, our precedents, and our judicial decisions.”
A printer watches over a printing press at what was then the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C., in the early 20th century. FPG / Getty Images
It does not beg to be read. It’s printed on 11 x 8.5 inch paper, with a formal cover affixed with the U.S. seal. Its thickness depends on how active Congress was the day before. On April 29, when both chambers were in session, the Record ran for 233 pages. On May 4, when both chambers were on recess and met in pro forma sessions, the Record was 22 pages.
Across its four sections, it offers a “substantially verbatim” account of the happenings on Capitol Hill, with everything said and done on the floor of each chamber, divided into three columns per page. It has a “Daily Digest” of chamber action and committee meetings, and a section for extensions of remarks, which allows House members to submit words they never spoke aloud on the floor — tributes to high school sports teams, their favorite recipes, the marking of anniversaries and so on.
The inclusion of words that were not spoken on the floor has served as the source of controversy for decades, underscoring the importance of what gets in the Record and what does not. In 1972, Rep. Hale Boggs of Louisiana died in a plane crash. Two days later, a speech attributed to him appeared in the Record.
“He obviously didn’t do that two days after he had passed. He did the arrangements before he was leaving town,” Holt said. “But this led to that question of, ‘OK, what is in the Record, and how is it related to what is actually said on the floor of Congress?’”
The chambers implemented formatting changes to indicate when a speech had been added to the Record. But lawmakers could work around those by simply delivering the beginning of their remarks on the floor and submitting the rest for inclusion later. Further reforms followed in the 1980s.
“The rules were essentially put in place that said speeches can still be edited for clarity and things of that sort, but they ought to not be edited for substance,” Holt said.
When cameras were introduced in the House in 1979 and in the Senate in 1986, the Congressional Record was no longer the sole account of the chambers’ inner workings. But it continued to give readers a fuller picture of the proceedings.
“Ultimately, the point of it is still what it’s always been, which is to provide readers with as comprehensive as possible record of the issues and debates about them and the different viewpoints that go into the lawmaking process,” Holt said.
The making of the Congressional Record
These days, the process of creating the Record begins in the Capitol, where every floor speech and action in each chamber is logged from gavel to gavel.
When a lawmaker speaks, a rotating team of floor reporters take down every word in shorthand. On the Senate floor, they can be seen maneuvering skillfully around lawmakers with stenotype machines hanging from their necks. Working in 15-minute shifts, they can tap 225 words per minute.
Off the floor, the reporters work with editors, called scopists, to convert their stenographic notes into polished documents. For every 15 minutes of floor time, the process takes about an hour and a half in the House, and between two and three hours in the Senate. Additional rounds of editing follow, and the transcripts are ultimately compiled with vote tallies, committee reports and other materials.
The process then moves up North Capitol Street, to the headquarters of the Government Publishing Office, where some 70 employees are involved in getting the final product out the door. Once the world’s largest printing plant, the GPO is housed in a seven-story red-brick Romanesque Revival building constructed in 1903. The building sits on the same spot that housed the GPO when it was established on the day of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861.
The headquarters of the Government Publishing Office in Washington, D.C.Ajay Suresh / Flickr
Once editing is finished on the Hill, the team of specialists sends the material to the GPO, both digitally and in paper form. Messengers carry stacks of paper from the Capitol to the GPO over the course of the afternoon and evening.
It’s not unusual for the copies to arrive with additions scrawled in the margins or on sticky notes directing a change. If there’s a discrepancy, it’s the paper copy that wins out.
“The document of record is paper,” GPO Director Hugh Halpern told CBS News on a recent tour of the facilities. “They invest over there in a lot of computers and software and all of that kind of stuff. But ultimately, if you were looking for the source of truth, it is paper.”
The GPO’s congressional customer service office serves as the intake point for material from the Hill. It’s an unassuming office space. A board hanging below a clock on the wall notes when the chambers gaveled out of session, when copy has been received and how many pages came in. Most importantly, it specifies when the House and Senate convene next. The GPO aims to complete the Record before lawmakers come in the following morning.
A bulletin board at the Government Publishing Office tracks progress on producing the Congressional Record. Kaia Hubbard / CBS News
“We want to make sure that the Congressional Record is on time — that’s our number one priority,” said Natalya Panyan, who works in the customer service office.
The staffers communicate with official reporters and legislative clerks and check that all the documents are accounted for. The documents are then taken into the proof room, where workers are tasked with making sense of the stacks of pages sent up from the Hill. They compare the pages to digital files and mark them up with formatting instructions before a new round of corrections.
Stepping into the proof room is like entering a newsroom from a bygone era, with mountains of papers riddled with red markings and eyes poring meticulously over every page. It runs 24 hours a day, five or six days out of the week.
Work on the Congressional Record in the proof room starts late. Most of it is done between 3:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. The workers receive a number of “drops” of copy from each chamber throughout the evening. They get to work, grabbing copy from the “takeout counter” and beginning their mark-up process. The proofreaders use a series of red stamps to denote all the stylistic elements of the page, following intricate formatting rules for each section of the Congressional Record.
On a bulletin board labeled “improvement opportunities,” printouts remind the proofreaders to avoid common pitfalls: “Rep. Brittany Pettersen NOT Petterson,” one page says. Another reminds proofreaders to watch out for the capitalization in Rep. Chip Roy’s first name when it stands alone. Buckets labeled for the Record’s sections — “Senate,” “House” and “Digest” — hang from the sides of desks to collect pages.
A GPO proofreader compares a page with formatting notations to the final version. Kaia Hubbard / CBS News
“It takes a particular type of person who’s got both the skill, attention to detail and, frankly, disposition to do this kind of really detail-oriented work,” Halpern said.
By the time the third shift comes in for the night, “it’s like an orchestra,” one proofreader, Darlene Rios-Bay, said. “Everybody is doing their part.”
Workers elsewhere in the proof room enter the formatting information into the electronic files to ensure they match, before they’re posted online and sent to the printers.
Another floor of the GPO building houses the printing operation. It’s a massive space where voices must ascend to new levels to overcome the whir of the machines. The scents of warm paper and ink swirl together. And despite the modern machines, the history of the space — lined in faded brick and tile — is palpable. The room was built to accommodate rows of heavy, metal rotary printing presses of another era. Soaring windows were needed to let in light and illuminate the space.
The space where the Congressional Record is printed in the Government Publishing Office. Kaia Hubbard / CBS News
Three different kinds of machines are responsible for printing the Congressional Record. While one printer spits out the thick, off-white covers, another feeds a massive roll of lightweight paper through a printer to create the Record’s double-sided pages. It’s capable of producing thousands of pages per minute. A third machine cuts, folds and staples each copy together to create the magazine-like Record, spitting out each copy in a satisfying line, ready to be delivered.
Finished copies of the Congressional Record, ready for delivery to Capitol Hill. Kaia Hubbard / CBS News
The printing process changed within the last decade from traditional presses that took eight or nine people to run, complete with metal plates and tons of waste. Now, the digital inkjet technology requires just two workers. Halpern said the process has “grown up over time.”
“It started from the beginnings of GPO in the 1860s — when we started on this very spot, where we were setting type by hand — and then to today, where the process is largely digital,” he said.
“Not going away”
In 1970, the GPO was printing nearly 50,000 copies per day, using 36 rolls of paper weighing more than 20 tons. Halpern said the number of copies fell in the 1980s and 90s to closer to 25,000 copies per day. Now, it’s about 1,500.
Most of those copies go to libraries and other institutions. But Halpern said “our primary customer is Capitol Hill — Congress.”
“There’s some folks who are still working in paper up there, but most of it is, they’re working off of our digital files,” he said.
The GPO has a major digital presence with govinfo.gov, which serves as a digital repository for all three branches of the federal government. Halpern said while many people tend to think that the agency is focused on producing paper products, most of their work is firmly situated in the 21st century.
“We do document conversion. So Congress gives us documents, whether it’s a bill or a piece of the Congressional Record or whatever, and we transform that into a digital file,” he said. “And then ultimately we output that digital file one of two ways. We either put it on the web or we create a print.”
Along with the Congressional Record, the GPO also produces a number of other products, including U.S. passports, the Federal Register, the president’s budget and the official pocket Constitution.
Looking forward, Halpern acknowledged that the Congressional Record may need to change to meet the times.
“It is an intricate process. It’s something that’s been evolving over time, and frankly, it’s something that’s not going away, and we need to sort of envision what that next generation, what that new Congressional Record looks like,” Halpern said. “We’re not there yet, that’s sort of the kind of thing that’s whispered about as we go along, but we’ve been making the investments.”
GPO Director Hugh Halpern on Capitol Hill on April 29, 2025. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
The GPO takes its cues from Congress. Halpern said they’ve made the investments to ensure they’re ready to execute when Capitol Hill comes calling. The agency is working on modernizing its publishing system to streamline the document conversion process and move away from a software that Halpern said came out when he was 12.
“I am a long way from 12,” he said. “So we are in the process of replacing that piece of software.”
Halpern said he gets a lot of questions about AI, but “we have not yet found a technology that can replace one of our trained proofreaders.”
“Eventually, I would love to see a tool that’s sort of like Grammarly on steroids, that can cut out some of the more routine work for our proofreaders,” he said. “But we still haven’t found a good substitute for having these highly trained human beings in the loop.”
Standing in the massive expanse of the printing space, his voice competing with the din of the machines, Halpern said the operation’s evolution “has been a journey.”
“We’re still on that journey,” he said. “But it’s going in the right direction.”
