United States Congress
Data Dictionary of Legislative Documents

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Element Name: account
Description: A hierarchical structure used within appropriations legislation.

An account (structure of legislation) is a rarely used element, as most appropriations accounts are tagged as titles (structure of legislation). However, when several accounts are grouped under a general heading, (e.g., “Related Accounts” or “General Provisions”), the general heading is tagged as a title (structure of legislation), and the individual accounts contained within are tagged as accounts (structure of legislation). When used, an account (structure of legislation) is typically comprised of one or more subaccounts (structure of legislation).

The formatting of an account (structure of legislation) will be according to the rules of the appropriation style. The style will control such display issues as the fonts and highlighting used, centering of headings, the margins, and the indentation levels. The style will also control generation of text, as well as any punctuation or spacing surrounding or following the header. Accordingly, such punctuation will not be keyed and will not be part of the data.
Bills DTD Content Model: (header, subheader*, appropriations–para*, (subaccount | section)*)
Attributes:
Name: changed
Description: Has this ENTIRE structural element (such as a Section (structure of legislation), Title (structure of legislation), etc.) been added or deleted?
Value(s): added, deleted, not-changed
Default Value: not-changed
Name: id
Description: Unique name for the element so that it can be referenced.
Value(s): ID
Default Value: #REQUIRED
Name: indent
Description: Mechanism permitting an override of the indentation typically used or a way to specify indentation level for a structure. The values are relative (up1 through up7 and down1 through down7) and absolute (the structure level can be specified such as subsection).
Value(s): left-margin, flush-left, subsection, paragraph, subparagraph, clause, subclause, item, subitem, up1, up2, up3, up4, up5, up6, down1, down2, down3, down4, down5, down6
Default Value: #IMPLIED
Name: reporting-committee
Description: For new or deleted textual material, this attribute provides a link to the name of the committee that made a particular insertion or deletion. The committee name is defined in the committee amendment line, which is part of one of the actions associated with the measure. This element links a specific change to that committee name.
Value(s): CDATA
Default Value: #IMPLIED
Name: reporting-committee-number
Description: This attribute represents the change style. For example, if 0, the material is not displayed. If 1, the added material is italic and the deleted material is strike-through. If 2, the added material is bold-italic and the deleted material is bold-strike-through. All of these items have not been defined.
Value(s): CDATA
Default Value: 1
Parent Elements:
  • quoted-block
  • title