Research practice
Methodology & Standards
The project is designed so a reader can distinguish the original public record, the site’s explanation of it, and any editorial judgment used to connect records.
Source Hierarchy
Official government records and primary filings are preferred. Secondary sources may provide context but do not replace the underlying record.
Federal Data vs. Research
Amounts and transaction fields from public databases are labeled as federal data. Summaries, relevance notes, and relationship judgments are labeled as Paper Trail research.
Data Completeness
A source-universe total is kept separate from records imported, identity-resolved, classified, and displayed. Coverage indicators report both the numerator and denominator when the source supplies a comparable total. An incomplete import is never labeled successful, and unavailable source totals are left unknown rather than estimated.
FEC Summary vs. Transactions
FEC committee summaries distinguish contributions to federal candidates and committees, independent expenditures, total disbursements, operating expenditures, transfers, and refunds. Paper Trail recipient tables are reconstructed from active, non-memo Schedule B Line 23 records, so they are compared with the corresponding summary category—not total spending.
Unresolved Records
Unclassified includes imported records that have not been reconciled or classified and, where a summary denominator is available, any remaining gap between classified transactions and that source total. Low-coverage distributions retain an unclassified category and may suppress percentages.
Refresh Timing
Coverage reflects the latest completed source pagination run and may lag the source. Failed and incomplete runs retain an error record and do not silently replace the last known complete import.
Identity Matching
Organizations, committees, recipients, subsidiaries, agencies, and politicians are linked only when identifiers or reviewed evidence support the match. Bioguide and FEC identifiers—not similar names—anchor congressional reconciliation. Raw FEC and Bioguide names are retained separately from the public display name.
Current-Member Universe
The politician directory uses current service terms in the structured congress-legislators roster. It includes serving senators, voting House members, non-voting delegates, and the resident commissioner when present; it excludes vacancies, recently departed members, and members-elect who have not begun service.
Politician & Legislation Data
Bills, official CRS summaries, subjects, actions, sponsors, cosponsors, text links, and House roll calls use Congress.gov and its API. Senate member-vote coverage is not currently synchronized. Service terms and identifier crosswalks are supplemented by the structured congress-legislators public dataset.
Plain-English Summaries
Paper Trail condenses up to four sentences from the official CRS summary without inventing a title-only explanation. Each record stores its source version, method, generation date, review flag, and whether a human edited it. Readers should verify legal details in the official text.
Issue & Industry Relevance
Bills enter issue hubs through weighted, inspectable rules applied to official policy areas, legislative subjects, titles, and summaries. Industry links describe possible policy exposure; they do not claim that a company wrote, supported, opposed, or benefited from a bill.
Committee Membership
Current committee and subcommittee assignments use unitedstates/congress-legislators, whose update tooling derives House records from the House Clerk and Senate records from Senate.gov. Bioguide ID is the reconciliation key.
Tracked PAC Totals
Politician and committee totals include only organization-affiliated PAC records currently represented in Paper Trail. They are not total campaign fundraising, all contributions, or a measure of support.
Connection Guardrail
A contribution recipient's sponsorship, cosponsorship, or vote may be shown beside a tracked PAC contribution as co-occurring public records. The connection does not establish coordination, influence, agreement, or causation.
People & Revolving Door
Executive and director positions use reviewed SEC filings or other official records. Lobbying roles and disclosed covered government positions come from federal LDA filings. A documented career transition means that separate sourced position records show a government and private-sector or lobbying career path. Automated syncs preserve editorial overrides and do not create fuzzy person matches.
Personal FEC Contributions
Itemized individual contributions appear only after a confirmed or high-confidence identity match using more than name similarity, such as employer, occupation, location, and known employment. Ambiguous matches remain in a private review queue. Itemized records may not represent every contribution a person made.
Dates and Scope
Pages show coverage periods and update dates wherever the source provides them. A trailing period, election cycle, fiscal year, and cumulative award total are not interchangeable.
Corrections
Substantive corrections should update the record, its review date, and—when useful—a note explaining the change. Readers can submit supporting evidence for review.
Sources & data
Primary Public Sources
Current data sources include USAspending.gov, the Federal Election Commission, Congress.gov, Senate lobbying disclosure records, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and agency publications. Each substantive page should link to the source actually used and show the relevant coverage or refresh date.
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