Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." In 1914, an uncharacteristically foresighted Congress spent $25,000 to establish a fact-finding arm whose mission was to gather "data ... bearing upon legislation, and to render such data serviceable to Congress." A century later, the Congressional Research Service generates hundreds of analytical non-partisan reports on legislative issues each year.

CRS reports often inform public debate. A recent analysis, which found no correlation between economic growth and cutting tax rates for the wealthy, set off a re-appraisal of long-held orthodoxy about tax policy. A 2006 analysis questioning the legal rationale supporting the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping policy caused many to look at the issue with fresh eyes. CRS analyses are routinely cited in news reports, by the courts, in congressional debate, and by government watchdogs.

However, unlike its sister agencies that investigate federal spending and analyze the budgetary effects of legislation, CRS does not release its reports to the public on a regular basis. This was not always so, and even now CRS routinely shares its reports with officials in the executive and judicial branches and with the press upon request. Congressional offices also act to disseminate the reports, publishing some on their websites, frequently sending others to constituents in response to requests, and giving them to reporters (often to help push a political narrative.)

But for a member of the public, it's difficult to access reports generated by the 600-person $100 million-a-year agency in any comprehensive way. Efforts by non-profit organizations to gather and re-publish the reports online have met with limited success. The private sector has stepped in, selling access to the reports at $20 a pop, but the premium accentuates the gap between the elites and everyone else.

For over a decade-and-a-half, some members of Congress have pushed legislation to ensure that CRS reports intended for a general congressional audience are routinely made available to the public. They believe that all Americans should have an equal opportunity to be educated about important legislative issues. They know that increasing visibility of the reports will make the reports better, too. For the 113th Congress, Reps. Mike Quigley and Leonard Lance are leading the charge in the House of Representatives.

CRS leadership has quietly undermined public-access efforts. They feared an influx of public comments and a weakening of the special relationship they believe CRS has with Congress. However, CRS has never been obligated to respond to public comment, and there hasn't been a deluge of inquiries even with the reports being sold to special interests and made available by activists online. Moreover, CRS's target audience -- congressional staff -- have increasingly turned to Google and Wikipedia as a starting point for research.

CRS’s continued relevance to policymakers is predicated on releasing its reports to the public that they serve. In an era where just about everyone expresses an opinion online, we must ensure that we have all the facts as well.

Legislation that would require reports to Congress be made available online in one central location was recently reintroduced by Representatives Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD), and has attracted a bipartisan group of cosponsors. The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act garnered significant support during the 112th Congress, and was favorably reported out of the House Oversight and Administration committees. Sunlight supported the ACMRA when it was introduced in 2011 and continues to support it now.

The bill directs the Government Printing Office to make reports that have been mandated by Congress available online, in bulk and open formats. The GPO already has a portal for publishing reports online. When the bill was making its way through the 112th Congress GPO supported it, noting that they could easily bear the costs of implementing it themselves.

During the last Congress the bill made significant progress through the legislative process. In addition to being supported by the GPO it picked up numerous co-sponsors and attracted companion legislation in the Senate.

A number of groups, including the Sunlight Foundation, reiterated their support for the ACMRA in this letter. We hope that it will be quickly considered by Congress and sent to the President's desk.

The Congressional Transparency Caucus is holding an event this Tuesday, March 12, 2013 to discuss recent progress in FOIA reform and explore what still needs to be done to improve public access to government records. The event will take place in room 2203 of the Rayburn House Office Building and will start at 3 p.m.

The Transparency Caucus will hear from a number of noted FOIA experts:

• Daniel Schuman, Policy Counsel, Sunlight Foundation (moderator)
• Miriam Nisbet, Director of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at the National Archives and Records Administration
• Rick Blum, Coordinator, Sunshine in Government Initiative
• Gavin Baker, Open Government Policy Analyst at the Center for Effective Government
• Richard Pollock, Investigative Reporter, Washington Examiner

The Congressional Transparency Caucus is co-chaired by Representative's Mike Quigley (D-IL) and Darrell Issa (R-CA). The Caucus seeks to enact legislation that will bring openness and accessibility to the federal government.

Today, Representatives Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) reintroduced legislation that will make it easier for the public, the media, and government employees to better understand the important policy matters facing Congress. The bipartisan "Public Access to Congressional Research Service Reports Resolution of 2013," H.Res.110, would ensure that these reports, which are often cited by courts and the media and sold by third parties for $20 per copy, are freely available to the public on a website maintained by the House Clerk.

When Representatives Lance and Quigley introduced this resolution in the 112th Congress we praised the bill, noting that "reliable access to CRS Reports would ensure that everyone has timely and comprehensive access to the collective wisdom of hundreds of analysts and experts on political issues when they're at their most salient." This is perhaps even more important today with controversial issues like the sequester and gun control tying our legislature in knots. A few non-profit organizations manage to make some of these reports freely available, but only the CRS can do this in a truly comprehensive manner.

The resolution opens the doors to greater public understanding of Congress and should be applauded and supported.

More than 30 organizations have signed on to a letter supporting the resolution. If you want to learn more about the importance of making CRS reports publicly available, please take the time to read the letter, which is embedded below.

Open CRS Resolution Support Letter

Markup of a bill to make agency reports to Congress transparent did not occur as planned on Thursday after the measure was pulled to allow technical improvements. The Committee on House Administration was set to review the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act, which if enacted would require that reports from agencies to Congress be available altogether on a single website, thereby improving transparency and facilitating congressional oversight.

Committee Chairman Dan Lungren explained the delay:

We had originally planned to consider a fifth bill, H.R. 1974. However, some of our colleagues identified some issues with it that they wanted additional time to work out. After consulting with Representative Quigley, the sponsor, they asked that we remove it from today’s schedule and we have done so.

The scheduling of the legislation for markup is a strong indicator of support for the measure by committee Republicans. Committee Democrats released a statement Thursday afternoon:

House Administration Democrats support the bill, but we wanted to make some technical improvements to the bill prior to marking it up. We hope to see continued action on this bill in the coming weeks.

The legislation, introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley, enjoys broad bipartisan support and already has been favorably reported out of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. It also enjoys broad support from the transparency community.

We hope that the measure will be ready for consideration by the full House in the near future. A companion measure is pending before a Senate committee.

Tomorrow the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act will get its turn in the spotlight. The legislation, which would require reports from agencies to Congress be available online on a single website, is set for a mark-up before the Committee on House Administration. The bipartisan bill was already favorably reported by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in June 2011, but must pass another hurdle before going to the House floor. It enjoys widespread support from members of the transparency community.

The bill fixes a problem that has bedeviled Congress and watchdogs for years. Federal agencies are required to submit reports to Congress, but they often fail to do so, and even reports that have been submitted often cannot be found on agency websites or congressional webpages. This makes oversight incredibly difficult.

ACMRA solves these problems by requiring that all congressionally mandated reports be sent to GPO, which would then publish them online on a single website. (The House Clerk already compiles a master list of the reports that must be filed.) Centralization publication will make the reports easy to find -- and it would become a trivial task to identify when agencies have failed to file on time. The reports must be submitted in open formats and can be downloaded in bulk, so they are easy to open and analyze. In limited circumstances, some of the contents of the reports can be redacted for national security or other reasons, but only if the redaction is permissible under FOIA. It's also worth noting that GPO says that the costs of implementing the legislation are not significant and would be borne by the agency.

Rep. Mike Quigley introduced the legislation and spearheaded efforts to get it enacted in the House. He is now joined by 17 co-sponsors. Senator Lieberman introduced a companion measure in the Senate, which is cosponsored by Senators Collins and Coburn.

A favorable report by the Committee on House Administration could set the stage for quick passage in the House and a hearing in the Senate. CHA has supported a number of other open government measures, so it is hoped that the legislation will meet quick approval.

Representatives Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) introduced legislation today that will help the American people, the media, and government employees better understand important public policy issues. The bipartisan "Public Access to Congressional Research Service Reports Resolution of 2012" (aka H. Res 727) would ensure that reports by Congress's $100 million-a-year think tank become available to the public on a website maintained by the House Clerk.

The reports, prepared by the Congressional Research Service, are frequently cited by the courts and the media and requested by members of the public, but CRS does not release them to the public. Instead, they come to widespread attention after they are released in dribs and drabs by Congressional offices and painstakingly collected by researchers. Some are collected and sold for $20 a copy, while others are made available by non-profit organizations for public consumption. By the time they become publicly available, the reports can become outdated, especially when an issue is moving quickly in Congress.

Reliable access to CRS Reports would ensure that everyone has timely and comprehensive access to the collective wisdom of hundreds of analysts and experts on political issues when they're at their most salient. This is already common practice in other support arms of the Congress, like the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office.

In the past CRS reports have been more widely available, but relatively recent CRS-imposed policies are increasingly limiting access even as the Internet has made the documents easier to share. In fact, the original limitation on public access was imposed in the 1950s on CRS's predecessor agency and arose from a concern about the costs of printing and mailing the reports -- not their confidentiality. In the Internet age, this limitation no longer makes sense, especially as these reports are already available on CRS's internal website in electronic form.

The legislation is careful to ensure that confidential memoranda between CRS and individual members of Congress are kept confidential -- only the reports that CRS makes generally available  to the 10,000+ hill staffers will be online. While it requires reports be searchable and downloadable, the resolution also ensures that confidential and copyrighted information will be redacted, along with the names and contact information for the report's authors.

Over the years, many members of Congress and organizations have called for public access to CRS Reports. The Sunlight Foundation has asked for this for years. Public access legislation has been sponsored in the House or Senate nearly every Congress going back for more than a decade. And in other countries, public access is routine: 85% of G-20 countries whose parliaments have subject matter experts make CRS-like reports available to the public.

The resolution introduced by Representatives Lance and Quigley opens the doors to greater public understanding of Congress and should be applauded and supported. Unlike most legislation, it only needs to be adopted by the House of Representatives, so contact your representative to urge that this important resolution be adopted. And don't forget to thank Reps. Lance and Quigley.

The Washington Post reported yesterday on new lobbyist regulations being proposed by the American League of Lobbyists. According to the report, ALL recommends eliminating the 20 percent loophole for lobbyists for hire. That would mean powerful stealth lobbyists like Tom Daschle, Newt Gingrich and Jon Corzine would have to register. ALL’s proposal would reduce the size of the loophole for in-house lobbyists, but just barely. It would allow lobbyists who work in-house to fly under the radar by claiming they spent less than 15 percent of their time lobbying. Sunlight has been advocating closing the 20 percent loophole for all lobbyists since before it was cool.

Sunlight’s position is simple. If you lobby, and you are paid to lobby, you should register to lobby. Twenty percent, fifteen percent, in house or not, it makes no difference.

Any carve out will be exploited, giving power players a way to hide their activities. Take Chris Dodd. The head of the Motion Picture Association of America is a former powerful senator who undoubtedly has the private numbers of many current members of Congress programmed into his cell phone. He’s not registered now, and there is no reason to think he would register simply because the threshold was lowered from 20 to 15 percent. Yet he has far more access and far more power than I, an outside lobbyist consultant to Sunlight, or the vast majority of lobbyists-for-hire could hope to have. Why give him a pass?

ALL is not the only group with a proposal to reform lobbying. The American Bar Association has a set of recommendations (that includes eliminating the 20 percent loophole, among other things), as of course, does Sunlight. Lobbying reform legislation has been introduced in Congress, and the President continues to talk about the issue. With all of the suggestions, ideas and competing (and overlapping) proposals, the time is ripe for Congress to take the issue of lobbying reform seriously. A start would be to hold hearings so that advocates could fully explain their positions and members of Congress could start to build a record and build a consensus for meaningful reform.

Yesterday evening, John reacted to President Obama's SOTU speech in which the President proposed a ban on lobbyists acting as bundlers. He criticized the proposal as "unlikely to pass Congress, and unlikely to pass muster with the courts." It's true that Congress is unlikely to do much of anything for the remainder of this session, although my bet is that the courts would uphold a bundling ban if it were structured properly. Regardless, focusing on banning lobbyist bundlers is to ignore the elephant in the room: we need to fix who is required to register as a lobbyist in the first place .

Were Congress to act in 2012, the best thing it could do is to tighten the requirement of who must register as a lobbyist so that the Newt Gingriches, Tom Daschles, and other hidden influencers will be brought into the sunlight. There's no doubt that they both have lobbied, at least under the common-sense definition of  "influenc[ing] politicians or public officials on a particular issue." The legal definition says essentially the same thing, but it allows lobbyists to evade registration so long as they avoid either spending 20% of their time lobbying or directly contacting more than 1 covered official. This is incredibly easy to do, and creates loopholes that just about everyone agrees should be closed.

So if we're going to talk about lobbying reform -- and a Pew Charitable Trust survey released Monday says 40% of Americans believe that addressing lobbyist influence is a top priority for 2012 -- the best place to start is with fixing the lobbyist registration and disclosure requirements. President Obama has addressed lobbying reform in the past, most visibly in his 2010 State of the Union speech, and his administration's actions have shown sensitivity to the importance of this issue. But he seems to have gotten sidetracked.

A good place to start is with the Lobbying Disclosure Enhancement Act, introduced by Rep. Quigley, which directly takes on the lobbying disclosure loopholes, as well as Sunlight's recommendations on this issue and the ABA Lobbying Task Force's report. For a primer, watch the Advisory Committee on Transparency's event "Washington's Lobbying Fix," which discusses all of these proposals.

Legislation that would require copies of congressionally mandated reports to be published online by GPO cleared a major hurdle when it unanimously passed the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at a business meeting on Wednesday. The "Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act," introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley and joined by 12 co-sponsors, will now advance to the floor of the House of Representatives.

The ACRMA will, for the first time ever, gather together all reports to Congress from federal agencies in one place online. It requires that the reports be published online by GPO in bulk, in open formats, and in a timely fashion, so that people can easily learn about the work of the federal government. It also makes it possible to determine when agencies have failed to submit reports to congress in a timely fashion as required by law.

Rep. Quigley has championed the transparency measure since he introduced it in May. Chairman Issa praised the legislation during the hearing, saying that "this is the kind of legislation we should work on." Ranking member Cummings agreed that this bill is a commonsense measure that everyone should support. Hopefully, this bipartisan support will lead to quick action by the House of Representatives.