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Congressional Research Service
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The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works exclusively and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis. CRS reports are highly regarded as in-depth, accurate, objective, and timely, but as a matter of policy they are not made directly available to members of the public.
There have been several attempts to pass legislation requiring all reports to be made available online, most recently in 2003, but none have passed.
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Encyclopedia
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works exclusively and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis. CRS reports are highly regarded as in-depth, accurate, objective, and timely, but as a matter of policy they are not made directly available to members of the public.
There have been several attempts to pass legislation requiring all reports to be made available online, most recently in 2003, but none have passed. Instead, the public must request individual reports from their Senators and Representatives in Congress, purchase them from private vendors, or search for them in various web archives of previously-released documents.
History and mission
Congress created CRS in order to have its own source of nonpartisan, objective analysis and research on all legislative issues. Indeed, the sole mission of CRS is to serve the United States Congress. CRS has been carrying out this mission since 1914, when it was first established as the Legislative Reference Service. Renamed the Congressional Research Service by the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, CRS is committed to providing the Congress, throughout the legislative process, comprehensive and reliable analysis, research and information services that are timely, objective, nonpartisan, and confidential, thereby contributing to an informed national legislature.
In fiscal year 2003, CRS had a budget of $86,386,812 funded mostly by taxpayer dollars.
CRS Products
Librarian Stephen Young summarizes the documents produced by the CRS as follows:
- CRS produces a number of document types although the most commonly requested are the reports (almost 4,000 reports are currently in existence). The purpose of a report is to clearly define the issue in the legislative context. The reports may take many forms including policy analysis, economic studies, statistical reviews, and legal analyses, and can be either Short Reports (RS), which are typically under 7 pages in length, or Long Reports (RL), which can include major studies on a particular topic. Over 700 new CRS reports are produced each year and made available on CRS Web to the select groups identified above. A second type of CRS document is the Issue Briefs (IB). These short documents, no longer than 16 pages, include issue definitions, background and policy analyses, legislation passed and pending, a bibliography of hearings, reports and documents and other congressional actions, a chronology of events, and reference sources. Approximately 150 issue briefs are currently in existence. Other documents types include Appropriations Reports (usually released as a Long Report), Electronic Briefing Books, Info Packs and Congressional distribution memoranda.
Issues Surrounding Public Availability
CRS reports are highly regarded as in-depth, accurate, objective and timely, and topped the list of the "10 Most-Wanted Government Documents" survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology, 1996. While CRS products are already available electronically to "members of Congress, Congressional committees, and CRS sister agencies (e.g. GAO)" through the internal CRS Web system, there is no public access.
Many but not all CRS reports can be obtained through specialized publishers such as , or from web archives such as , which relies on individual submissions to maintain its collection. OpenCRS has also published for US citizens on how to request reports from their member of congress, but neither the Congress nor the CRS are obligated to satisfy such requests (though they could presumably be compelled to do so through the FOIA.) However, as there is no accurate public list or catalog of CRS publications, all unreleased reports are effectively secret.
There have been numerous attempts to pass legislation requiring the CRS to make its products available on a public web site, including the introduction of bills in 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2003. All have so far failed to pass. Publicly stated reasons for this include legal liability for CRS findings, copyright issues, and increased CRS workload. However, it is far more more likely that the members of Congress who commission CRS reports wish to maintain control over the distribution of any potentially sensitive conclusions. This is illustrated in a 2003 CRS internal memo.
- PLACING CRS PRODUCT LINKS ON CONGRESSIONAL WEB SITES
- Statutory Restriction. The prohibition on publication of CRS products without oversight committee approval appears in the annual appropriations acts for the Legislative Branch. This provision is intended to preserve the role of CRS as a confidential resource solely available to the Congress. The appropriations acts, supplemented by congressional guidance that CRS has received over the years, and supported by judicial opinions, leaves to the Members and committees the decision whether, on a selective basis, to place CRS products in the public domain. Members have long made CRS products available to interested persons either directly, by inclusion in congressional publications, or through their own Web sites.
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- Key Risks of Wholesale Publication Without Selectivity. Legislation has been introduced in both houses (S. Res. 54 and H.R. 3630) that would authorize the wholesale public dissemination of CRS products, without selectivity, through Member and committee Web sites. Such an approach raises several policy and institutional concerns:
Impairment of Member Communication with Constituents – The danger of placing CRS, a support agency, in an intermediate position responding directly to constituents instead of preserving the direct relationship between constituents and their elected representatives. This threatens the dialog on policy issues between Members and their constituents that was envisioned by the Constitution.
Risk to Protection of Confidentiality – The current judicial and administrative perception of CRS might thereby be altered, putting at risk speech or debate protection for confidential work.
Change in Mission and Congressional Focus – Over time, CRS products might come to be written with a large public audience in mind and could no longer be focused solely on congressional needs.
Wikileaks release
On February 8, 2009 Wikileaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service reports, totaling more than 127,000 pages of text.
External links
- : one-stop shop for CRS reports. harvests include OpenCRS, UNT, FAS, Thurgood Marshall Law Library and others.
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