House bill supports public access to CRS reports
A new House bill would open Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports to the public. The measure, H.R. 3762, closely mirrors a Senate bill introduced by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) in the spring.
In a joint statement, the House bill’s two sponsors, Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) said that “CRS is governed by requirements for accuracy, objectivity, balance, and nonpartisanship – the very sort of analysis sought and valued by engaged constituents. As a dedicated congressional support agency, CRS is joined by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in providing Congress with information and analysis that is unequaled by any other national legislature. While GAO and CBO reports are already available to the public, CRS reports are not.”
Like its Senate counterpart, the House bill would provide public access to the reports through congressional member and committee websites, and would grant congressional officers leeway to withhold information that would pose copyright or confidentiality problems. One key difference is that the House bill provides for the production of an index only to the CRS Issue Briefs, but not to the reports or appropriations products, while the Senate bill provides for an index that would cover each of them. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) credited that provision in the Senate bill as a way to aid discovery and to “to let the public know what their lawmakers are reading.”
As I discussed here twice in March and again in May, public access to CRS reports has been a longstanding concern of librarians and open government groups, as indicated in March when CRS reports topped the list of “most wanted government documents” in a joint report (pdf, 426kb) by CDT and OpenTheGovernment.org.