Pull Congressional Data via SMS with the Congress API and JavaScript

The Congress API has been released, allowing public access to machine-readable data from Congress.gov. To use this API, developers need to sign up for a Twilio account and obtain an SMS-capable phone number, as well as a Congress.gov API key. The Twilio Serverless Toolkit can be used to develop locally and deploy to Twilio Functions & Assets, which provides server management capabilities. A sample JavaScript function is provided that uses the Congress API to retrieve data on bills or amendments based on user input via SMS, and returns a text message with relevant information. Once deployed, users can interact with the function by sending an SMS message to the designated Twilio phone number.