Presidential Materials in the United States

he White House telephone number is 202-456-1414. The White House Web address is www.whitehouse.gov.

Following provides information on obtaining selected Presidential materials. For tough questions, call the Executive Office Library (202-395-3654).

Bills: To find out whether a bill has been sent to or signed by the President, see the separate “Bill Status” entry. See also Signing Statements and Veto Messages, below.

Comments, Speeches, etc: Presidential comments, speeches, remarks, announcements, interviews, etc. are published in the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents (formerly the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents) and later compiled in the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (see the Publication of Presidential Materials section, below).

Selected recent comments, speeches, etc. are posted on WhiteHouse.gov.

Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents: See the “Publication of Presidential Materials” section, below.

Documents sent to Congress: Are published in the U.S. Serial Set.

Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations: Executive Orders and Proclamations from the current administration are posted on WhiteHouse.gov. Most Orders and Proclamations from the Clinton administration (but not those issued in 2001) are available in the archived versions of the Clinton White House Web site.

Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations are published officially in the theFederal Register. You can get Orders and Proclamations going back several years from the online edition, or from any other print or electronic version of the Register (see “Federal Register”). They are also included in the annual Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (for online access, see the Publications of Presidential Materials section, below).

Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations since 1940 are later published in theUnited States Code Congressional and News Service (USCCAN) (see Tables 7 and 8), Title 3 of the Code of Federal Regulations, and the Codification of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders, which arranges the documents by subject and provides with a substantial index.

Proclamations back to 1846 are published in Statutes at Large (see “Statutes At Large” in this legal Encyclopedia).

For very old Executive Orders not readily available elsewhere, politely contact the Library at the Office of Management and Budget (202-395-3080).

Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations are indexed in the CIS/Index to Presidential Executive Orders and Proclamations (1787 to 1983), the CIS Federal Register Index and the CIS/Index to Congressional Publications and Public Laws(a/k/a the CIS/Index). The CIS/Index is available in hard copy and on Lexis (LEGIS;CISINX). If you don’t have a more convenient source, you can buy anything you find in a CIS index directly from CIS (800-638-8380). The National Archives posts an index of Executive Orders that lets you look up where EOs appeared in the Federal Register citation back to 1933.

Nominations: Presidential nominations from the current administration are posted on www.whitehouse.gov and FDsys. The names of Presidential nominations that need confirmation by the U.S. Senate are posted on the Senate Web site and Thomas. Nominations are also posted in Congress.gov back to the 97^th Congress (1981-82) and published in the Public Papers of the President (discussed in the Publications of Presidential Materials section, below).

Pardons: For information on Presidential Pardons, see the separate entry for “Criminal Law.”

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: See the Publications of Presidential Materials section, below.

Signing Statements: Signing Statements are published in the Compilation of Presidential Documents (both the Daily and the former Weekly) and the Public Papers of the President, all discussed in the the Publications of Presidential Materials section, below. Signing Statements are also published in the United States Code Congressional and News Service (USCCAN) back into the 1940’s. For more, see Presidential Signing Statements by Shameema Rahman.

State of the Union Addresses: Are posted free back to 1790 on the website of the The American Presidency Project.

Tax Returns: Presidential tax returns are posted online by Tax Analyst’s Tax History Project.

Vetoes: See the separate “Federal Bills” entry if you would like to (a) find out whether a bill has been vetoed by the president, (b) get a copy of a vetoed bill, or (c) to get a list of vetoed bills. For the President’s official statement about a veto, see “Veto Messages,” below.

Veto Messages: Veto messages are published in the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents (formerly the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents), the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, all discussed in the the Publications of Presidential Materials section, below.

Veto Messages are also published in the U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News (USCCAN) series and the Congressional Record. USCCAN has been published by West since 1948; the content are available on Westlaw (USCCAN). For information about the Congressional Record, see the separate “Congressional Record” entry.

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents: See the Publications of Presidential Materials section, below.

Web Sites: The Clinton administration created the first Presidential Web site in the 1990s. The site posted press briefings, radio addresses, and most other publicly released White House publications. Comments, Executive Orders, Proclamations were posted in the related “White House Virtual Library.” Archived versions of the Clinton Web site and Virtual Library are posted by the National Archives as part of the Clinton Presidential Materials Project.

The George W. Bush Presidential Library posts the George W. Bush Administration White House Web Site as it existed in January, 2009.

Publication of Presidential Materials

The Presidential papers and speeches issued by the Office of the Press Secretary are published in the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents (formerly the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents). At the end of the year these materials are organized and published in the Public Papers of the President, along with nominations sent to the Senate and Presidential materials published in the Federal Register(Executive Orders, Proclamations, etc.).

The Daily/Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents is posted on FDsys from 1993 to the present (with selected materials from 1992).

The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States are posted from 1991 to the most recent year available on FDsys.

Older issues of the Weekly Compilation and Public Papers are available in print in most Federal depository libraries, and from 1965 to last year on HeinOnline.

Presidential Materials

Presidential Materials in the United States

Publication of Presidential Materials

See Also

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