PD Editorial: Americans finally get to see policy research they pay for

Facts aren’t what they used to be. Partisanship twists the truth, and when people cannot agree on what the facts are, what hope is there that they can find solutions to the challenges the nation faces?

A ray of hope emerged from, of all places, the bloated federal budget bill that passed a week ago. Congress finally ended decades of secrecy surrounding the Congressional Research Service, which produces some of the best, nonpartisan, just-the-facts reports on myriad topics.

When we wrote about daylight saving time last week, we visited a couple of our favorite websites that archive Congressional Research Service reports in hopes of finding a report on the topic. We found five of them, the most recent being from 2016.

The Congressional Research Service is Congress’ nonpartisan think tank. Five hundred people crank out 3,000 well-researched reports and updates on anything and everything that lawmakers take an interest in - from the ATF’s ability to regulate bump stocks to paid maternity leave to Zika outbreaks.

The reports tend to be very readable. They range in size from a single page to a few dozen pages in length. Most clock in at fewer than 20. These aren’t obscure academic treatises that delve deep into the weeds. That’s more the business of the Government Accountability Office. They aren’t superficial, either. They consistently hit the sweet spot of telling readers what they need to know.

Folks such as editorial writers, academics and lobbyists know how to find Congressional Research Service reports, at least the ones that have leaked into the public domain. But most people probably have never seen one. That’s because they’ve been kept from the public eye.

Even though taxpayers fund those reports and briefings for members of Congress to the tune of about $100 million per year, Americans have not had official access to them. Congress kept them for itself, even as the national dialogue could have benefited from some nonpartisan, high-quality fact gathering.

For more than 60 years, the reports ostensibly have been secret. At one time, Congress knew these reports would be popular and worried about the cost of printing copies. That excuse ran out with the arrival of the internet.

Since then it’s primarily been Washington inertia that has kept these documents behind closed doors.

Fans of government transparency and letting the people see what they pay for have lobbied Congress to lift the ban for decades. That message finally got through.

The budget bill that Congress passed and the president signed calls for the release of all nonconfidential reports. For the first time, everyone will have easy access to them. That can only help move the national conversation forward on many topics. A Congressional Research Report is as close as people will get to an unbiased accounting of the facts.

Don’t believe us? Try reading one yourself. Visit one of the current archives such as everycrsreport.com and search for a topic that interests you. You’ll be surprised what you can learn about an issue.