He served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Missouri from 1981 until his death from lung cancer in Bethesda, Maryland in 1996.

Emerson was raised in Jefferson County, Missouri and attended public schools in nearby Hillsboro.

In 1988, after an intervention with his family and friends, Emerson acknowledged his alcoholism and spent a month at the Betty Ford Center.

The Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge, which crosses the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau, is named after him, as is Emerson Hall, the main assembly room in the House Page School in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress and Emerson Hall, an upperclass residence hall at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, his alma mater.

The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996 was named after the congressman, who fought for the proposal but died of cancer before it was passed.