▶ 0:08:13This subcommittee will come to order. This is fiscal year 2026 legislative branch uh subcommittee public witness day hearing. I'd like to thank ranking member Espott and committee members for being here today. A special thank you to our witnesses for being here today. We appreciate your interest in the legislative branch and for taking time out of your busy schedules to testify before this subcommittee.
▶ 0:08:39In addition to our witnesses here this morning, additional witnesses have submitted testimony for the record and their statements may be found online. I would also like to note that this hearing serves as a vehicle for one of uh the member of Congress who submitted testimony for the record. Her statement can also be found online. I now recognize ranking member Espot for his opening remarks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 0:09:06I'm pleased to see so many outside public witnesses attending our hearing this morning. The subcommittee needs to hear uh the concerns of our constituencies and members of the public before us. We uh will provide that kind of input. We begin work on marking up our fiscal year 2026 subcommittee bill. It's great to see some familiar faces uh on our witness list.
▶ 0:09:33We have made progress over the years regarding many of your past requests to improve the operations of the LED branch. Your presence today means we have a lot more work to do. I look forward to hearing your suggestions. Thank you and I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Espott. We will hear from our witnesses and our panels of four. Each witness will deliver a short three-minut summary of their written testimony. Their full testimony has been submitted for the record.
▶ 0:10:00Following the testimony of each member of the panel, I will call on members for any questions. I now recognize my our first panel. And Mr. Alwan, you are now recognized for your three minutes. Chairman Valdo, Ranking Member Espayat, members of the subcommittee, thank you for allowing me to testify. As you know, actual staff salaries have um they vary between offices and account for about three4s of a member's budget, but each member is provided the same amount. It's known as the clerk hire component of the MAS.
▶ 0:10:30If we want to stop the revolving door that's draining institutional knowledge and undercuts legislative and constituent services, we have to align MAS with real world staffing costs. Before I retired from the House, I was asked to set all 441 bespoke member budgets in just three months for the incoming 111th Congress. It was then that I learned that the the clerk hire was set as $944,000 back in 2010. And I couldn't find any kind of supporting analysis for where that number came from.
▶ 0:11:00uh it was marginally increased to $994,000 in 2020. Um I knew we could do better as an institution when it was my job to set those MAS in 23. So I conducted a comprehensive salary analysis that categorized thousands of unique job titles into the typical roles found in a member office. I accounted for staff that wear multiple hats and I also made sure that shared staff didn't skew the numbers downwards.
▶ 0:11:24This led to the first meaningful increase in the clerk hire uh in more than a decade from 994,000 to 1.434 million for every single member office. Even with that increase, turnover in 2023 was still high, over 60% among ledge assistants and over 70% among ledge correspondents. Since salaries continue to rise with inflation and market demands, members are increasingly basically robbing Peter to pay Paul just to maintain competitive pay. They buy less supplies and equipment.
▶ 0:11:53They pay they send less official mail or worse they hire less staff so that they can adequately pay the staff that they have. In February I launched hillclimbers.org. It's an online platform that transforms house sod data into salary and staffing insights for member offices. Our newest data shows that the average member office will have will spend more than 1.5 million this year on salaries and 1.55 million by 2026. I have two recommendations.
▶ 0:12:21First, I think we need to get the cart, the horse before the cart. In February, appropriators, they set the uh the overall MRA budget and they'll come up with the number. And then at the end of the year, CHA, whose job it is to set the individual MAS, they have to reverse engineer uh all the individual MAS to fit within that budget that was set in February. So, you know, and that basically that process is not working.
▶ 0:12:47MAS have been held flat since 2023 when I set all the MAS for the last two years because of this process. I think that CHA and the appropriators should work closely together in February to figure out using real data which hill climbers can provide um to set an overall MRA budget that actually reflects the actual you know needs of members and the market demands.
▶ 0:13:10Um then in October CHA can set those individual MAS and when they do that they'll line up with the number that was set in February if we do this correctly. I proved in 2023 that it's possible to use math, science, and data to build extremely accurate MRA budgets and not have to reverse engineer them from a number. Second, we need to improve the SOD data set. One of the first things we have to do, and Daniel Schuman agrees with me on this as well, uh is to add unique identifiers to the data set.
▶ 0:13:39We need to know have a number that we can use to track people when they get married and change their last names or in the data set there are mistakes with the names. We need to be able to know who that person is. Second, we need to also have uh the a field that tells us whether they're permanent or non-permanent staff so that we can figure out according to the 184 framework whether member offices are staffed to their potential or not. Um staff salaries are essential for recruiting and training and retaining talented professionals. and thank you for your time.
▶ 0:14:09I look forward to your questions. I appreciate that, Mr. Awan. Uh, and now I recognize Mr. Sherek for his three minutes. Hi. Uh, my name is Jesse Sherik. I'm a government affairs specialist with the National Federation of the Blind. I'm here to talk to you today about the National uh Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled uh talking book service.
▶ 0:14:32Um, we're asking you as as a membership to continue funding the National Library Service Talking Book Service. It's a critical service needed by uh blind people across the country. There are some 8.3 estimated blind and low vision people across the country uh of all ages and it's it's a critical service and I'll I'll describe briefly why it's a critical service.
▶ 0:14:59Uh, I was born blind and as a young person, I became a talking book patron at seven years old. So, I've been a talking book patron for 39 years. Uh, until that point, um, I always had to have somebody read to me, uh, a family member or a friend and wasn't able to read on my own.
▶ 0:15:19So when I received talking book service, I was able to use the audiobooks and the braille books and it made a tremendous difference in my educational career in my professional development and it's a service that I still rely on heavily to this day. It's an extremely valuable service. Um not only I don't want to just tell you about my personal experience, but um prior to working for the National Federation of the Blind, I was a blind skills instructor.
▶ 0:15:45So, I taught adults who were losing eyesight and one of the things they would often say to me is,"I can't read anymore. You know, I'm I used to love to read. This isn't something I can I can take part in anymore." And I would demonstrate a talking book player or a braille e-reader and show them how to use the technology and all of a sudden they were able to read.
▶ 0:16:07It's a transformative moment in their life and it helps blind people to be successful in school, be successful um in in their jobs and be successful uh for our older adults who are retired. It helps them to you know enjoy those golden years and gives so much hope back uh to people.
▶ 0:16:27So on behalf of the National Federation of the Blind, on behalf of the 8.3 Blind and Low Vision Americans, we ask you to continue uh supporting the National Library Service and keep funding it at its current level. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Uh I now recognize Mr. Raki uh for his three minutes. Thank you, Chairman Valadeo, Ranking Member Espay, and members of the subcommittee.
▶ 0:16:55Uh, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today in support of fiscal year 2026 and your ongoing support of efforts to build capacity in the legislative branch. My name is JD Raki. I'm a senior policy analyst with the structural democracy project at the bipartisan policy center and re relevant to today. Uh, I've also previously had the privilege of serving as professional staff with the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.
▶ 0:17:19Um, as both a political scientist and someone with experience as a staffer, I can confidently say that I know Congress can best execute its article one responsibilities only when it adequately invests in its own capacity. The American people rightly demand efficiency and effectiveness from their government. Um, however, it is important to remember that efficiency can be gained both from reducing spending and through strategic investment.
▶ 0:17:45Um, that is why I'm requesting that funding for the House Modernization Initiatives Account uh be appropriated at the $10 million level, which is a return to the level allocated in FY24 and the uh bill version of FY25 that was approved by the subcommittee prior to the CR. I also request uh the inclusion of report language that would create reporting requirements for entities receiving funds from the account.
▶ 0:18:11We know that MIA has a track record of success helping launch programs such as deconlict and house cal uh case compass and a comprehensive legislative drafting study among many others. Um while knowledge of the good work uh funded by this count exists among members and staff um and close observers of the institution uh the public accounting of this fund is kind of scattered across a handful of reports and testimony uh before this subcommittee and the committee on house administration.
▶ 0:18:41Um to my knowledge, there's no one location that details which projects have benefited from MIA funds or the current status of those projects. Um requiring the generation of more standardized reporting requirements for MIA funds will help increase accountability um and inform future modernizers modernizers about successful approaches used by current modernization efforts.
▶ 0:19:06On a related note, um, additional BPC testimony submitted by former senators hikeamp and Martinez makes clear uh that Congress must do more to respond to the Supreme Court's Loperbrite decision and the ending of Chevron difference. Uh, MIA funds can help get the ball rolling by, uh, funding improvements to the flag track program, development of a tour tracking program, and in particular the expansion of the newly developed committee portal.
▶ 0:19:32Um, again, thank you for your work on these important issues, uh, and for the opportunity to provide public testimony. Um, and I look forward to your Thank you, Mr. Raki. And I now recognize Mr. Schuman for his three minutes. Thank you, Chair Valado, Ranking Member Espott. Uh, Representative Moore, it's good to be uh, testifying before you, and thank you so much for having the public come in and testify before this committee. I'm excited to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity.
▶ 0:20:00My name is Daniel Schuman and I'm the executive director of the American Governance Institute and today I want to talk about improving congressional access to reports from federal agencies. Over the years, Congress has directed federal agencies to provide thousands of reports to Congress. Uh but it's not always possible to find these reports. To keep track, uh for 203 years, the House has asked the clerk to maintain a list. Uh I brought a prop. I hope you don't mind.
▶ 0:20:26This is the uh this is the list of the reports that are due to Congress each year. This is the list of the reports that are due to the House and to the Senate. It's 412 pages long. I did not count how many reports are actually in here, but uh there there's a bunch. Um uh and a couple years ago, the the Congress passed legislation for all the reports that the agencies are submitting to be made available to GO. So GPO is maintaining an archive of them all. This all sounds good and fine, right?
▶ 0:20:56The problem is that this voluminous list uh only includes the reports that are due to the House and due to the Senate, but not the reports that are due to the committees and the subcommittees. And the agencies are not providing all the reports to Congress that they're supposed to provide. We don't know which ones are missing because we don't have a list of all of them. Uh I spoke with the clerk's office.
▶ 0:21:18Um, the clerk's office will be more than happy to update this list to include reports that are due to the House and the Senate as well as his committees and subcommittees, but they have a resource problem. Uh, they can't afford to generate the list that's to include those due to committees and subcommittees. They said that they would need two additional executive communication clerks. That's about $350,000 to go and make sure that you have a list that's due to the committees and subcommittees as well as to the House and to the Senate.
▶ 0:21:45uh because right now on GO's website, despite this gigantic document, there are only 716 reports posted there. So presumably there's a bunch missing. If uh GO can check the list of what they receive against the list that's required, then you can go and follow up with the agencies to find out the ones that are missing and make sure that they're providing it. Um you can either pay two people to go and comb through all the laws and find this stuff. Uh or maybe technology can help do this.
▶ 0:22:11Last year, you all directed uh the clerk to make recommendations to you about how to solve this problem. My request this year is um to go ahead and direct the clerk now to solve the problem. Uh appropriate $350,000 uh fortunately, this is not that much comparison to say what the capital police were asking for just the other day. Um $350,000 to either update this list or to build an AI tool or some other tool to track it. Um, this would make it possible easier for you all to do oversight over the agencies.
▶ 0:22:42It would make it easier for the public uh to find this information and it would solve a problem um that Congress has been trying to solve since 1822, which is to find all the reports that are due to Congress so you can actually read the reports, figure out which ones are unnecessary, and get rid of those and make better decisions about the things that you're trying to do. This committee has long been supportive of improving and making the legislative branch more capable. This is another small step in that direction. So, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Schuman.
▶ 0:23:11Uh, I'd like to see if any of my colleagues would like to be recognized to ask a question of the first panel. All right. Well, I'd like to thank the panel for for your time today and for your comments. And uh I think we'll start with the you guys are excused and we'll start with the second
▶ 0:24:14All right. Well, I appreciate you guys all uh hearing here today. And I'd like to start with uh I'd like to recognize Mr. Lips to provide his three minute se uh summary of his uh testimony. Hi, my name is Dan Lips. I'm a senior fellow with the Foundation for American Innovation.
▶ 0:24:37I respectfully request the subcommittee include report language aimed at increasing the Government Accountability Offic's return on investment and impact. As you heard from the comproller general this morning, GAO has an impressive track record, delivering a return of $123 for every dollar provided by Congress over the past six years. All Americans should be grateful for the hard work of Congress's watchdog agency.
▶ 0:25:03But the subcommittee should ask, how can Congress further increase GAO's return on investment? Over the past three years, GAO's ROI has averaged just 78 to1, well below that six-year average. Today, more than 5,200 JO recommendations remain open. And last year, JO reported that agencies had failed to implement 30% of recommendations made four years ago.
▶ 0:25:29Congress could save hundreds of billions of dollars by enacting GAO's nonpartisan recommendations in a timely manner. This subcommittee has already taken important steps, including requiring quarterly reports on improper payments, public estimates of potential savings associated with open recommendations, and directing GAO to attach deadlines or time frames to new recommendations, all to increase ROI.
▶ 0:25:55Each of these steps is valuable, and I encourage you to continue requiring these reports in FY 2026. In addition, I respectfully recommend two new reporting requirements. First, require the Congressional Budget Office to issue a report estimating the potential budgetary effects of implementing open GAO recommendations.
▶ 0:26:16Former CBO director Keith Hall has explained that such a report would provide quote a useful measure of preventable waste, helping Congress increase pressure on agencies and improving GAO's ROI. Second, direct GAO to use artificial intelligence to review federal regulations and identify outdated language.
▶ 0:26:36Last year, Congress enacted a bipartisan law, the GAO database modernization act, which requires GAO to track outdated rules that are identified and eliminated by federal agencies. Now, Congress can increase GAO's rule uh role in conducting regulatory oversight, including by le leveraging technology. The state of Ohio successfully used AI combined with human oversight to streamline its code, eliminating nearly 5 million words or onethird of its regulatory text.
▶ 0:27:06GAO could provide nonpartisan analysis to inform a similar regulatory cleanup effort for the federal government. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. Thank you, Mr. Lips. And now I recognize Mr. Townson for his three minutes. Thank you, Chairman Valadeo, uh, Ranking Member Espayad, and, uh, Vice Chair Moore.
▶ 0:27:27I'm Jim Townsen, and I'm director of the Carl Leven Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University Law School, and I really want to pre express my appreciation for uh, the opportunity to testify to you today about how we can strengthen the first branch of government through improving its tools for conducting oversight, bipartisan oversight in particular. So, um I'm going to mention three items that are in a letter that um I sent to you along with my colleague at the project on government oversight.
▶ 0:27:56Uh there were nine items in that, but in the interest of time, I'm going to focus on three items that we think are particularly important for strengthening oversight. Those three items are bipartisan websites, bipartisan reports, and hiring bip administrative staff on a bipartisan basis. Um, so before I get to those, I just want to say a word about the Levven Center. We are an institute founded by Senator Carl Leven uh upon his retirement from the US Senate back about 10 years ago now in 2015.
▶ 0:28:25Senator Leven was known for his bipartisan work, his alliances he built across the aisle to do oversight to really get into the the the specifics and to dig into what uh dig into the problems are facing the American people. Um we our our sort of guiding light and principle is that when you're conducting oversight, you are really be you are acting as the eyes and voice of the American people. And and those words eyes and voice don't don't come from us.
▶ 0:28:52They come from the Supreme Court in a in a seminal ruling over 70 years ago uh on the power of Congress to um subpoena information. So in in that spirit, I just want to mention these three priorities. The first one is bipartisan uh websites. Um websites right now in the Senate are are formed on a bipartisan base, but in in the House um oftent times we have uh Democratic websites and Republican websites. And this is uh this is a problem on several fronts.
▶ 0:29:22First, it's it's a waste of resources. Having dup duplicate websites is obviously um uh twice what you know, you're incurring more cost than you need to. Uh secondly, it really encourages partisanship in factf finding. And that's really the opposite of what you're charged with doing and and being the eyes and voice of the people. Really good oversight and factf finding work is done on a bipartisan basis because you get a greater breadth of information.
▶ 0:29:50You get viewpoints coming from different sides all in pursuit of of the facts and trying to reach some consensus on how to move forward. Um, so the other problem with with having uh separate partisan websites is a lot of times documents created by the committee are lost when partisan control uh flips in in in in the in the in the chamber. Um, the last two items I want to mention though are bipartisan reports, which um, again, same problem.
▶ 0:30:19when you're issuing minority and and majority reports, it's much more difficult uh for the public to understand actually where you stand because they've got to read two different reports to get that information. And finally, administrative staff. The functions of uh of uh administrative personnel are really not partisan in nature. you know, issuing subpoenas, uh, dealing dealing with u all the paperwork that has to be done to conduct oversight to log um, uh, the information that's gathered. All this is not really a partisan concern.
▶ 0:30:50And so we really think um, it would be a much better practice and again uh, a much more cost-effective practice if this could be conducted on a bipartisan basis and administrative personnel were bipartisan. So again, thank you for this opportunity and I look forward to any of your questions. Thank you, Mr. Townsen. I now recognize Mr. Stern for his three Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking member, uh, Mr. Vice Chairman, thank you very much for this opportunity to testify. My name is Mike Stern.
▶ 0:31:18I was uh, I've had several roles on the Hill, but most relevantly to my current testimony. I spent eight years in the House General Counsel's office from 1996 to 2004. Today I would like to talk to you about the need for some greater transparency in the House's uh legal uh functions specifically the public facing uh website of the house general counsel.
▶ 0:31:45Uh today the uh general counsel's office has a public website with some very basic information about its functions and some filings from the last two years. That's about it that it has. Moreover, it reports to the bipartisan legal advisory group which is uh responsible for advising the speaker with regard to the functioning of the house council's office and for articulating the institutional position of the house in litigation.
▶ 0:32:15Uh but as it's known has no website and there's virtually no information at all about it in any official house source. This lack of transparency is concerning because it's in the House's institutional interest for the public to have more information about its legal positions and how they are formulated.
▶ 0:32:38Today, a member of the public or a legal scholar would have find it very difficult to find what the House's position is on important legal In contrast, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has a website which with hundreds of opinions on executive power, all of which are wrong. No, I just that's a joke.
▶ 0:33:01Um, but it does uh create a great imbalance uh between the branches in terms of things like uh oversight and separation of powers issues. Uh, so I'll give you one recent example of an OLC opinion which threatens congressional oversight prerogatives.
▶ 0:33:18Last year, the OLC issued an opinion finding that a subpoena from the House Foreign Relations Committee to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was invalid because, well, Secretary Blinken apparently had something on his schedule that conflicted with the date that the committee wanted him to testify. The idea that congressional subpoenas are invalid just because the executive branch thinks it has something better to do is a novel and dangerous idea.
▶ 0:33:47In fact, no less an authority than Paul Coburn, a longstanding veteran uh recently retired of OLC, has publicly expressed concerns about the threat this opinion poses to congressional oversight.
▶ 0:34:01Now I know there's not a lot we can do uh to solve this problem today but we can take a small step uh in that direction by improving the houses's public facing the house general counsel's public facing website and the place to start would be to take the information that's behind the four congressional offices tab that is not available to the public and I believe there's a lot of information there that would be able to be moved to the public side without uh
▶ 0:34:31violating any confidentiality. So, I'll stop there and uh answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Mr. Stern. I now recognize Miss Stewart for her three minutes. Chair Valido, Ranking Member Espot, and Vice Chair Moore. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I'm Danielle Stewart, former House Chief of Staff and modernization staffer now serving with the bipartisan Popfox Foundation.
▶ 0:34:55Our team of former legislative branch staffers and public servants worked to strengthen congressional capacity while ensuring the responsible use of taxpayer funds. Today, I'd like to highlight three priority items for the committee's consideration. First, we recommend a feasibility study within the CAO to establish a House casework support office. Congressional offices are facing unprecedented surges in constituent requests for help with federal agencies, some seeing double or tripledigit increases.
▶ 0:35:25Through our casework navigator program, which provides training, resource sharing, and a regular newsletter to support case workers, we've heard firsthand how this increases straining staff and office A centralized office could collect and share up-to-date agency contacts and best practices, serve as a clearing house for policy changes, provide referrals to existing CEO services, and build tools to identify systemic agency issues.
▶ 0:35:52This would be a natural extension of successful staff development initiatives like the CEO's coach program and the house HR hub. A feasibility study would be a logical next step. Second, our team supports further ex exploration of remote voting technology in the House. This effort is not about excusing absences. It's about ensuring continuity operations during emergencies or when in-person gatherings become impossible.
▶ 0:36:20Other major legislators, including Canada and the UK, have implemented secure remote voting options for their members. As national security threats evolve, Congress must maintain its ability to vote and exercise its Article One responsibilities, even if members cannot physically convene in the capital. Finally, we recommend in-house development of AI training resources for members and staff. With network traffic data suggesting that a quarter of house staff regularly use AI, there's an urgent need for institutional guidance.
▶ 0:36:51An optional in-house curriculum through the Congressional Staff Academy could provide courses on ethical AI usage, ensure all offices have access to practical guidance, and offer sandbox sessions for safe experimentation with these tools. In recent years, the House have made has made important strides in modernization and staff support.
▶ 0:37:10These three initiatives, casework support, remote voting capability and AI training would further enhance congressional operations and responsiveness to constituents and keep the legislative branch competitive in a rapidly invol evolving society. Thank you for your consideration. The POP Fox Foundation stands ready to provide any additional information or support. Thank you, Miss Stewart. Uh see if any of my colleagues here have any questions for this panel.
▶ 0:37:38Well, you're excused and thank you for your time today. I like to ask the third panel to up. Mr.
▶ 0:38:08heart recognize you for your three minutes. Thank you to the subcommittee uh for the opportunity to testify today and thank you also to the staff for coordinating with all of the witnesses. I very much appreciate the opportunity to be with you. I'm Nick Hart, president and CEO of the data foundation. We're a national nonprofit that advocates for open data and evidence informed policy and decision-making.
▶ 0:38:31Uh I'm here today representing our community which includes our data coalition members and many many partners who support responsible data access, effective data governance and meaningful data transparency across the whole of government including the legislative branch and want to recognize also that many of the witnesses today have also acknowledged these issues in their commentary. I urge Congress strongly to create and establish a chief data officer function within the legislative branch as part of the current appropriations process.
▶ 0:39:00Back in 2018, Congress passed legislation requiring executive branch agencies to do so as part of the Open Government Data Act and that was signed by President Trump at the time. Congress should apply these same principles here in the legislative branch under Article One. It's a lowcost mechanism that helps ensure Congress has the information it needs to effectively and efficiently legislate. And it's a way of focusing on the data on the systems, not just the systems themselves.
▶ 0:39:26It's not about creating more bureaucracy or not even a way of criticizing the excellent expertise of the congressional staff today, but a way to ensure that Congress has access and availability of the information that it needs and can coordinate across the entirety of the congressional enterprise when it comes to data. The current lack of this enterprise uh wide data governance strategy creates some real problems and I think some of those have even been acknowledged today so far.
▶ 0:39:52When developing legislation, congressional offices repeatedly request the same information and analysis, creating some duplication, even some delays. During the appropriations process, offices may struggle to analyze the immense volume of data, including performance information provided by uh agencies to the uh legislative branch and other offices may not even be aware of some of that performance information that comes in about outputs, efficiency measures, and eventually the outcomes.
▶ 0:40:20A congressional co can help coordinate this existing data function without replacing a lot of the great work that's already happening. Highlighting a couple of the key benefits that we see developing a data catalog, a way of knowing what data exists across the institution of Congress.
▶ 0:40:35Establishing protocols for appropriate and responsible effective uh executive legislative data sharing while respecting constitutional principles, enabling new privacy preserving technologies that are becoming very common in many parts of government today that help us protect sensitive information. Supporting implementation of new laws from the last Congress like the CBO data sharing act and even creating machine readable formats.
▶ 0:41:00We think this is a modest investment and a a leads to some substantial returns that are not just symbolic, not just cultural, but lead to action. Our research shows that u quality data systems pay for themselves through improved services and reduced waste. Strongly encourage Congress to establish an enterprisewide chief data officer. And thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Mr. Hart. Now, I recognize Mr. McGrath for his three minutes.
▶ 0:41:28Chairman Veo, Ranking Member Espad, and uh Vice Chairman Moore, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Antoine McGrath, and I'm the creator of CRSports.com, a public website which I built and maintained starting in 2015 with help from like-minded friends with the sole purpose of making congressionally research service uh congressional research service reports more accessible to the public.
▶ 0:41:53We had no institutional support or outside funding, just a shared belief that these taxpayer funded materials should be freely available to the people who paid for them. CRS reports made uh.com made reports available to the public before any official site existed. Our work was later subsumed by every CRSports.com run by Daniel Schuman in the support of demand progress. Together we show showed that publishing CRS reports could scale at scale could be done quickly and efficiently.
▶ 0:42:23Since then, Congress has passed the uh equal access to congressional research service act which requires uh requires public access to non-confidential CRS reports and funding for that effort. The public portal to CRS reports hosted by Congress has done well and has informed the public of complex issues before Congress. But their work is not done. CRS has not released historical reports, tens of thousands of them, which rema remain locked away in the internal system known as CRSX.
▶ 0:42:52As a result, unofficial repositories such as the ones that I created uh serve more reports than CRS does itself. Congress can use its authority to again direct CRS and the Library of Congress. this this time to work with GO to release CRS reports to the public with specific note that this includes historical unclassified reports. Public access to these PDF in PDF format would suffice. The effort this effort has been approved and funded by Congress.
▶ 0:43:22Uh providing clarity around historical CRS reports is a high impact step that fulfills the spirit of the law and benefits Congress, researchers, and the public. I respectfully urge the subcommittee to act. Thank you again for your time. Appreciate your comments, Mr. McGrath. Uh any questions from the my colleagues here? You guys are excused. Thank you very much for your time.
▶ 0:43:55All right. Um if there are no further questions, I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for being here today. Members may submit additional questions for the record and the committee now stands