To do more, Congress needs to know more
Your weekly update on government function.
Imagine you’re a member of Congress, or a Capitol Hill staffer. You’re studying a policy issue in order to draft a piece of legislation. Where do you get your information?
Sure, there are all sorts of people trying to funnel facts and figures to you — lobbyists, advocacy groups, etc. But, obviously, they won’t all be acting entirely in good faith; most of them will have a certain point of view they’re trying to push.
That’s why, back in 1914, lawmakers created the earliest iteration of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Known as Congress’ in-house think tank, the CRS has a staff of around 600, all standing ready to assist lawmakers or their staffs whenever they need help with research. In the 2022 fiscal year, the CRS responded to 36,222 email queries and 21,212 telephone calls from congressional offices; penned 2,754 confidential memoranda; and released or updated 3,028 reports.
These reports — all of them completely fact-based and non-partisan — cover an impressive range of topics; this week’s list of new CRS publications included overviews of the U.S.-Egypt relationship, home energy rebates under the Inflation Reduction Act, and the removal of a set of dams on the Oregon-California border.
“A lot of people think that Congress is just the members of Congress, committees and leadership, but it actually is this entire ecosystem that includes support agencies that help members of Congress do their jobs,” Taylor J. Swift, the director of government capacity at POPVOX Foundation, told me.1 “And one of those jobs is providing timely, accurate data and research so that they can write policy, oversee the other branches of government, and serve their constituents.”
“If Congress wants good, quality, non-partisan data, especially in the time we’re living in, with misinformation and partisan politics, they need a support office that can get that information to them in a timely manner,” Swift added.
This week, both the House and Senate unanimously passed bills that would boost the capacity of these support agencies, which will allow Congress itself to work more effectively.
Both bills address the same problem: to do their jobs helping lawmakers, the support offices often need data from executive branch agencies — but those agencies aren’t always willing to share it.
That means a lawmaker might ask the CRS for information on, say, how many veterans are receiving health benefits. But the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) doesn’t have to share the data, preventing the lawmaker from being able to write new legislation or perform oversight. “Oftentimes, these agencies just aren’t responding at all,” Swift said. “Or if they do, they will actually require CRS to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get the information, which is crazy because, you know, it’s all in the same governmental system.”
This issue exists because of the way a Truman-era law, the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, was written, requiring the CRS to receive certain permissions before accessing executive branch data. This week, the House approved the Modernizing the Congressional Research Service’s Access to Data Act, which would close the 1946 loophole and give CRS the authority to access “all forms of records, information, and data” from executive branch agencies that it needs to respond to congressional requests.
The agencies will be required to furnish CRS with “all such available material in a timely manner.”
The Senate, meanwhile, passed the Congressional Budget Office Data Sharing Act, which fixes a similar problem for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), another support agency that serves as Congress’ in-house number-crunchers. (The CBO is known for “scoring” pieces of legislation — releasing analyses of how much a bill will add or subtract, but usually add, to the deficit.)
The CBO bill already passed the House unanimously in April, which means the Senate’s passage will send it to the president’s desk. The CRS bill still has to go through the Senate.
On their own, these bills might not sound like they’re addressing such big issues. But they will help the entire legislative process run more smoothly, ensuring that when lawmakers are tackling larger issues — from health care, to immigration, to aiding veterans — they have accurate data in front of them.
The bills also address a separation-of-powers concern: a big part of why the CRS and CBO exist is so lawmakers have independent researchers at their disposal, ensuring that they don’t have to rely on the executive branch for policy analysis. The executive and legislative branches are co-equal; if one branch has (unclassified) data, the other should too, and these bills will help make that a reality.
That balance of power between the branches is especially important after the Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference, a longtime precedent that gave executive branch agencies leeway in how they implemented pieces of legislation. Without Chevron, the question of legislative capacity is even more important; Congress will need to write laws with even greater specificity as power shifts from experts in the executive branch writing regulations to experts in the legislative branch writing laws.
The problem is that the legislative branch has a lot fewer experts — in fact, the congressional workforce is even smaller today than it was in the 1980s, while the size of the executive branch has continued to grow.
“When we’re dealing with this consequential shift in authority and increased granularity on how legislation is written [after Chevron], specificity in legal language is going to be really important,” Swift said. “And so with that, if you’re going to be writing things slightly differently, you’re really, really going to need to have strong, sound, foundational, non-partisan research to back up what you’re putting into legislative language.”
The two bills passed this week aim to help prepare for this shift, by trying to shrink the information gap between the legislative and executive branches.
Both measures originated as recommendations of the House Modernization Subcommittee, which has been studying ways to make Congress work better — and doing so in an unorthodox (and thoroughly bipartisan) way.
“In your traditional hearing format, you have your members up on the dais, and they’re sitting above all of the witnesses,” explained Swift, who helped set up the panel as a House staffer. “The Republicans are on the right side, the Democrats are on the left side. It’s very tribal and it’s very divided… It doesn’t really allow for an environment that is conducive for problem solving and open conversations.”
The Modernization panel conducts its hearing by roundtable, all sitting at the same level. “They would sit around a table, and they would have bipartisan seating, so members of the opposite party would be sitting next to each other,” Swift explained.
It was at one of these roundtables that the CRS explained the need for a bill like the one that passed this week, so the CRS can help lawmakers help their constituent, and make the broader legislative process work better. That idea moved one step closer to reality this week.
What else Congress did this week
The House voted on a slew of China-related bills, including measures targeting Chinese-made drones, batteries, and routers; Chinese biotech firms, and Chinese purchases of American farmland. All passed with bipartisan support.
The House also voted unanimously to pass measures imposing new Russian sanctions, saving $1 million by stopping the decennial printing of an annotated version of the Constitution, and allowing the American Samoa to amend its Constitution without congressional approval.
The Senate confirmed four judicial nominees, three of whom received bipartisan support.
More news to know
AP: Speaker Johnson postpones vote on a bill to avoid a partial government shutdown
CNN: Judge throws out two charges Trump faces in Georgia election subversion case
Reuters: Trump says he will end all taxes on overtime if elected
Cook Political Report: As Montana Senate moves to Lean Republican, GOP increasingly favored to win Senate majority
The Hill: Manchin endorses Hogan in Maryland Senate race: He’s ‘the right person’
Thanks for the great info on the CRS somewhat less known to the general public than the CBO. This I the stuff you do best.
Thanks for another great teaching article, Gabe.