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CongressMCP

91+ congressional data tools for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, and any MCP client.

Access live U.S. Congressional data — bills, votes, members, committees, hearings, and more — through natural language via the Model Context Protocol.

Quick Start

1. Get a free Congress.gov API key

Sign up at api.congress.gov/sign-up (takes 30 seconds, completely free).

2. Configure your MCP client

Claude Desktop — add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["congressmcp"],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

VS Code — add to .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "congressmcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["congressmcp"],
      "env": {
        "CONGRESS_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor — add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json using the same format as VS Code.

3. Start asking questions

"Find recent climate change bills in the 119th Congress" "How did senators from California vote on the latest defense bill?" "Who are the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee?" "What's the latest action on H.R. 1234?"

Tools

6 toolsets, 91+ operations covering all Congress.gov API endpoints:

Toolset Operations What it does
Bills 16 Search, details, text, actions, amendments, cosponsors, subjects
Amendments 7 Search, details, actions, sponsors, text
Treaties & Summaries 5 Treaty search, actions, committees, text; bill summaries
Members & Committees 13 Member search by name/state/district, sponsored legislation, committee bills/reports
Voting & Nominations 13 House/Senate votes, nominations, roll calls
Records & Hearings 10+ Congressional Record, hearings, CRS reports, committee prints

Running from source

git clone https://github.com/amurshak/congressMCP
cd congressMCP
pip install -e .

# stdio (default — for MCP clients)
CONGRESS_API_KEY=your-key congressmcp

# HTTP (for self-hosting / remote access)
congressmcp --transport streamable-http --port 8000

Configuration

Variable Required Default Description
CONGRESS_API_KEY Yes Your free Congress.gov API key
MCP_TRANSPORT No stdio Transport mode (stdio or streamable-http)
ENABLE_CACHING No false Cache API responses in memory
CACHE_TIMEOUT No 300 Cache TTL in seconds

Contributing

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create a feature branch
  3. Submit a pull request

License

Sustainable Use License


Built for government transparency and accessible civic data.