The Balance of Powers Demands a Strong Congressional Research Service

Is it too late to fix the Congressional Research Service, Congress’s in-house think tank? On March 20, interim director Robert Newlen described encountering a staffer balancing her cell phone on a door jamb in the repurposed Washington, D.C. book depository that houses CRS. When asked why, she explained that it was the only place she could get cell service and be responsive to calls from congressional offices. When called, she would answer, hang up, and call back from outside the building.

Newlen relayed the grim anecdote at a hearing held by the House Modernization Subcommittee on revitalizing CRS. The hearing painted a grim picture of the organization that Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden had tapped Newlen to lead after Congress pushed out the agency’s flailing director, Mary Mazanec, last summer. Newlen told the panel how work would often halt because CRS staff could not get support for their computers, printers, and other technology. They would be embarrassed when their low-cost Zoom accounts would cut off meetings at 40 minutes.

CRS employs hundreds of experts—economists, lawyers, reference librarians, and scientists—to provide Congress with research and analysis. For most of its history, the agency had a hard-won reputation for providing independent and authoritative advice. But CRS’s usefulness to Congress has suffered over the last three decades. Years of mismanagement led to an insular culture and a glacial pace of technological modernization. Right-wing political attacks drove out experienced analysts and intimidated the leadership into making the organization’s policy analysis cautious and insipid.

CRS embodies some of the worst dysfunction of the entire legislative branch. With a few notable exceptions in recent years, Republicans inspired by the Newt Gingrich-led revolution of 1995 have advanced policies that undermine their branch’s ability to function, regardless of when the GOP is in charge of one or both chambers. Since 1994, CRS and another of Congress’s support agencies, the Government Accountability Office, have each lost more than a quarter of their staff. Congress has also cut its own member and committee staff and suppressed staff pay, focusing meager resources on essentials like security and physical infrastructure. The result is a vacuum of expertise. Without reliable expertise in-house, members look outside Congress and its support agencies for basic facts and analysis, leading to an undue reliance on lobbyists, advocates, and the executive branch.

Fortunately, Congress has begun to revamp CRS as part of its larger push to modernize the entire branch. The House Administration Committee and its Senate counterpart completed the first item on this to-do list by pushing out Mazanec and starting a search for a new leader of the 600-person-strong agency. Now, the House is moving forward with legislation to empower CRS to more easily get information from the executive branch and eliminate unnecessary expenses. 

If lawmakers can fix CRS, they can use it to fix the rest of government.

Diagnosing the illness

CRS grew from humble beginnings. In 1914, Progressive Era reformers in Congress established a small office housed in the Library of Congress to provide basic research services. In 1946, after World War II had expanded the executive branch’s powers, Congress wanted to assert its equality. It formalized the research office into the Legislative Reference Service and gave it a broader remit, adding policy experts who published reports for Congress.

Finally, in 1970, the LRS was reorganized into the Congressional Research Service. The director of CRS was given the authority to appoint senior specialists, and the agency was empowered by statute to demand information from the executive branch on behalf of congressional committees. For the next quarter century, CRS analysts enjoyed significant autonomy from their managers and a broad mandate from Congress to provide expert advice on all policy topics. CRS experts commanded respect beyond Capitol Hill. They often penned articles on governance for the academy and mainstream magazines and newspapers.

That all began to change in the 1990s. In 1995, Republican Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House and declared war on the legislative branch, slashing the budget of the Government Accountability Office and abolishing the Office of Technology Assessment. House Republicans also eliminated 600 committee staff positions. As former CRS analyst Harold Relyea later attested, Daniel Mulhollan, the CRS director installed in 1993 by Reagan-appointed Librarian of Congress James Billington, sought to avoid cuts to the agency by playing down contentious research topics and imposing a censorious new agenda on his agency:

With little adequate explanation to, and to the great consternation of, CRS staff, the science policy research division and the environment and national resources division were merged; the economics division was abolished and its analysts were redistributed largely to the foreign affairs and government division; support staff were greatly reduced; and the administrative structure of the Service morphed into a very gothic, hierarchical pyramid of a highly bureaucratic character. Also disturbing to many CRS staff members was a CRS director’s call for ‘neutrality’ in their speaking and writing published outside of CRS.

As Mulhollan tightened his grip in the 2000s, the experts hired by CRS in the 1970s slowly began to retire. The personal connections they had forged with members of Congress and senior staff had partly protected their ability to advise Congress, but with this exodus, CRS’s decline accelerated.

CRS analysts were also now generally prohibited from sharing their reports with the public and speaking with the press. It became harder for staff to interact with their academic and think tank colleagues. This isolation cut off valuable feedback that would identify errors, improve products, and allow staff to learn from peers.

In the 2010s, hard-right Republicans vilified CRS for reports on topics like executive branch wiretapping, the environmental effects of coal ash, and the economic downsides of cutting top tax rates. CRS management bowed to the pressure, showing they would not stand up for the staff. Kevin Kosar, a former CRS analyst now with the American Enterprise Institute, recounted in the Washington Monthly, “Reaching conclusions—the job of an expert—became verboten. In fact, for a time, CRS analysts were told not to end their reports with a section titled ‘conclusion.’” This policy led to the punishment of long-serving staff who had provided unvarnished analysis for decades, such as Lou Fisher, who was transferred out of CRS to the Law Library of Congress in 2006, an experience he recounted in testimony in 2019.   

When CRS Director Mulhollan retired in 2011, most CRS reports had become too cautious to provide deep insight. CRS leadership resisted technological modernization and bristled at the mildest constructive suggestions for improvement. Kosar recounted his experience of trying to alter a form used internally by the agency, a process that required four months of “dogging the people responsible to make the change.”

This organizational dysfunction continued under Muhollan’s successor, Mary Mazanec, who was appointed in 2011 by Billington. Turnover among all staff accelerated. At a House Modernization Subcommittee hearing in May 2023, Chair Stephanie Bice grilled Mazanec over “persistent culture and morale issues” at the agency that “risk undermining CRS’s ability to retain their most valuable asset—the hundreds of analysts, attorneys, and research librarians that support Congress’s work.” A letter from the CRS union laid out their concerns about “a lack of a commitment to diversity and inclusion, poor communication by CRS leadership, and an overall lack of confidence and trust in CRS’ senior leaders.” Two months later, Mazanec finally resigned under congressional pressure.

A new hope

After decades of mismanagement, interim Director Newlen’s testimony before the Modernization Subcommittee in March was remarkably encouraging. ModCom, as it’s known, is an innovative bipartisan subcommittee created in 2019 that has already issued more than 200 recommendations to modernize Congress, many of which have come into effect.

On the docket were committee members’ bills empowering CRS to bypass roadblocks to accessing information held by the executive branch, save more than $1 million in printing costs for the legal treatise known as the Constitution Annotated, and consider establishing an “evidence-based” policy commission that would promote the use of federal data in policymaking.   

Running CRS, always a tall task, is gargantuan in the charge of a caretaker. But interim Director Newlen is no stranger to the Library of Congress, having served in leadership positions in the Law Library and as deputy Librarian of Congress.

I served as a legislative attorney at CRS in its American Law Division in 2006 and 2007. As a longtime advocate for strengthening Congress, I have attended many hearings featuring CRS directors. I was struck by Newlen’s warmth and efforts to address the agency’s problems. He does more than talk. He listens. (He held 13 focus groups within his first five weeks of taking office and received 400 emails from staff when asked for feedback, which explains much about the pent-up demand for change.) Newlen testified that he is a loving critic of CRS, a remarkable statement from the agency’s head. He explained his goals are to reduce costs, add value, and maximize taxpayer return on investment. In addition, modernizing CRS technology is one of his highest priorities, and he has closely reviewed the recommendations of the Modernization Subcommittee.

Newlen has already instituted overdue, if modest, technological improvements. He worked with the Library to update the Wi-Fi so there would be connectivity everywhere; directed that technicians be embedded in the various service units to address IT support immediately, which dramatically reduced wait time to resolve technology issues; and worked to ensure that staff would have Zoom pro accounts.

In addition, Newlen wants to save money by ending the decennial print publication of the Constitution Annotated, a legal treatise that explains the US Constitution section by section. For over a decade, I pushed the CRS to publish the Constitution Annotated online in an accessible and useful format, which they resisted. I wasn’t the only one. CRS staff had developed an online version two decades ago, only to be ignored by management. Eventually, Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute took it upon themselves to create an interactive digital version.

Now we have Newlen praising the “concise, user-friendly format” of Cornell’s digital edition, which he called “an overwhelming success since its launch.” It is gratifying to hear a CRS director speak approvingly of making CRS’s work useful to the public. He is right to push to save $1 million annually by ending the print publication of the Constitution Annotated.

These are relatively minor changes, but it’s a good start. Other reforms will require new legislation. For years, CRS has struggled to pry information from federal agencies. Newlen’s testimony describes one instance where CRS has been “attempting to procure two data resources, critical to its research, since 2017.” That’s ridiculous. Agencies would push back, telling CRS to file a Freedom of Information Act request, request a Memorandum of Understanding, or take all sorts of steps that, in his description, were really because the agencies didn’t want to cough up the information. (This was an issue when I worked there almost two decades ago.) CRS submitted a proposal to Congress to expand its authority, bringing CRS’s powers to obtain information requested by Committees and individual members of Congress “on par with other support agencies.” That legislation is advancing to the House floor.

What should CRS do?

No rule says CRS cannot be innovative. Other agencies around the world with similar missions are innovating.

At a big-picture level, CRS should rejuvenate the agency by doing more to support staff and listen to their concerns. This will help address the agency’s sky-high turnover. Management should also collaborate with the union and congressional overseers to address the turnover and morale issues.

In addition, CRS should dial back its “neutrality” policy, which denudes reports of valuable analysis, and instead reestablish a clear standard of non-partisanship grounded in deep expertise. If an analyst is writing a report on the shape of the Earth, it should not merely say: “Some people say the Earth is flat; others say it’s an oblate spheroid.” CRS staff are experts. Let them explain—where is the weight of the evidence?

CRS must again put expertise at the center of the agency’s work. This includes allowing for more CRS “detailees” to spend time working directly in Congress, which is a prime way for the organization’s staff to get to know the needs and rhythms of Congress by serving as temporary committee staff. It also means restoring the ability of expert staff to attain a Senior Executive Service (SES) designated leadership position in the civil service instead of hoarding those roles for management staff, a policy instituted under Daniel Mulhollan in the 1990s. Experts should be appropriately compensated and retained—and mentor the next generation of staff.

Furthermore, within broad limits, CRS should allow, encourage, and facilitate staff attendance at conferences, writing public papers, and exchanging knowledge with their peers without fear that doing so imperils their jobs.

CRS should also reimagine what it means to serve Congress. That includes reassessing the information that congressional staff need and the formats in which they need it delivered. Maybe there should be regular topical newsletters that round up all relevant information from multiple sources, not just CRS.

CRS should highlight its reports to relevant news outlets so that congressional staff are more likely to discover new reports through their regular information channels. CRS should also work to incorporate their findings into Wikipedia, where almost everyone starts their research.     

At a micro level, CRS should allow their reports to be fully integrated into Congress.gov and publish them in reader-friendly formats. CRS should also work to make their historical reports available to congressional staff, members of the legislative branch, and the public. This will empower all of us to leverage the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on agency research to help us understand when policy issues recur. It should not be the case that I publish twice as many CRS reports at everycrsreport.com, a website I helped create to serve as a public repository of the service’s reports, than CRS provides the public and congressional stakeholders.

CRS should also integrate the capability to compare bills into Congress.gov. It’s important to know when a legislative idea in one bill is identical or related to another, both for the current Congress and over multiple Congresses. Not only is this a time-saver for legislative research and analysis, but it also allows members to get credit for their ideas when they become law, regardless of the legislative vehicle.

Imagine if CRS fully invested in the idea of an innovation lab to build tools and products that met Congress’s needs or deeply collaborated with other CRS-like entities at parliaments around the world to share the workload and provide products that draw from a global knowledge base. It would be transformational and save taxpayer dollars.

Keep the loving criticism alive

Many of us are loving critics of CRS. We hope it will find a way to leverage our interest, support, and ideas to meet the needs of Congress and the American public.

We heard from the Library of Congress at a Senate Appropriations hearing on April 15, where appropriators clarified that this year will be a challenging budget environment. This is a warning signal. When times are good, money flows to the rest of the government but not necessarily the legislative branch. When they are bad, my research shows the legislative branch bears the brunt of parsimony compared to spending government-wide. Newlen and his colleagues must make the case that now is the time to invest. Congress must listen.

There is some good news: The Committee on House Administration favorably reported the bills to increase CRS’s access to executive branch data and replace the print publication of the Constitution Annotated with a digital version in late April, and the legislation is on a clear path towards passage by the House. And on July 11th, the Senate Appropriations Committee reported a bill that would bump CRS’s funding by $5 million to $141 million.

Newlen’s time leading CRS is short. The job announcement for his replacement has closed, and the Library of Congress and congressional overseers are thumbing through resumes.

There is a lot that CRS should do, from modernizing its technology to rethinking how it delivers information to Congress to elevating its expertise. Newlen is doing well as a caretaker, and let’s hope Congress turns over the keys to someone with an open mind and a willingness to imagine what a 21st-century research service could look like. There is much work to do to build a modern CRS—and bring expertise back to Congress.

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