Pension Action

Pension Action E-Newsletter

March 29, 2007

Public Access to Congressional Reports Restricted

Reports from the Congressional Research Service will no longer be routinely distributed to interested members of the public. According to a March 20 memo issued by CRS executive director Daniel Mulhollan, CRS employees are now required to have a supervisor’s approval before sharing reports with non-congressional audiences — including media, public-interest groups, scholars and the general public. This Washington Post article gives more detail on how CRS report distribution will change for non-congressional audiences.

CRS reports serve as an invaluable resource to the public because they often include statistics and detailed analysis that aren’t available anywhere else. The data in CRS reports provide much-needed information to organizations like the PRC that use CRS data as the basis for much of our statistics on pensions and retirement savings.

Below are just a few of the most recent CRS reports on retirement savings.

• Retirement Savings: How Much Will Workers Have When They Retire?
• Topics in Aging: Income and Poverty Among Older Americans in 2005
• Pension Sponsorship and Participation: Summary of Recent Trends
• Retirement Savings and Household Wealth: Trends from 2001 to 2004
• Retirement Plan Participation and Contributions: Trends from 1998 to 2003
  

The PRC has signed on to letters from Open CRS and the OpenTheGovernment.org coalition that ask Congressional leadership and members of the committees responsible for oversight of CRS to support the release of the CRS reports to the public and to hold hearings on the issue of public access to these important documents.

Here’s what you can do if you want to help ensure that CRS reports continue to be made available for public access.

Write a letter or call Members of Congress who serve on committees with oversight of CRS.

Leadership of the Committees Responsible for CRS Oversight

Committee on House Administration
Chairwoman Juanita Millender-McDonald
Representative Vernon Ehlers, Ranking Member

Senate Committee on Rules and Administration
Chairman Diane Feinstein
Senator Bob Bennett, Ranking Member

Information about how to contact leadership of these Committees is available on our web site. To contact other members of the Committees, visit the committee web sites.

Tell them that CRS reports should not be restricted from public access because:

1. CRS reports contain valuable, non-classified information. The continued release of this information would not constitute a security breach and would provide taxpayers with access to information already in the public domain.
   
   
2. CRS is funded by taxpayers to the tune of $100,000 million. CRS is 100 percent funded by taxpayers. Therefore, its non-classified reports should be released to the public.
   
   
3. Obtaining CRS reports directly from members of Congress is a lengthy and sometimes unreliable process for taxpayers. Because there is no way for taxpayers to know which reports have been published, they don’t know what reports to request from their member of Congress.