Our mission is to create a strong and functional Congress. It must prioritize the needs of the people over corporate and special interests. It must be a counter-weight to rising anti-democratic tendencies. And it must hold the Executive branch to account.
PRINCIPLES & CONTEXT
ACHIEVEMENTS
OUR TEAM
POLICY AGENDA
CONTACT US
For decades, Congress has underfunded itself to the detriment of our democracy. This created room for authoritarianism to surge.
Gingrich eviscerated Congress to centralize power in his hands and those of corporate special interests. He did this by reducing the number of political and non-political expert staff by more than 20%, a problem that persists to this day.
The purpose was three-fold:
Centralized Power
It centralized power in the hands of leadership by weakening institutional rivals: the committees and rank-and-file members.
Weakened Congress
By weakening Congress, outside interests could set the agenda and become the primary source for information and expertise. This also gave opponents of democracy a foothold by claiming that government doesn’t work.
Enhanced Presidential Power
By weakening Congress, the already powerful presidency became over-powerful, as its historical institutional check, the Legislative branch, became largely unable to function.
Getting Congress “un-stuck” requires a deep understanding of the Legislative branch and its political context. This is what we do.
Starting in the 2010’s, we conducted research and made recommendations to rebuild the legislative and technological infrastructure dismantled in the mid-1990s. At the same time, Congress is heeding our advice and is rewriting its rules and pushing for new laws to restore Congress as the First Branch of government.
We’ve successfully championed reforms to make Congress a better, more functional place to work.
And we have shown how technology can be a force multiplier for legislative activities, built technology now incorporated into congressional systems that supports a stronger Congress, and constructed a coalition that routinely engages with Congress.
We’re positively transforming Congress:
We successfully encouraged Congress to improve pay and working conditions for Hill staff that will help to close the revolving door and to rebuild the institution’s capacity to govern:
- We demonstrated the benefit of improving House staff pay, resulting in a 26% increase in funding. With our partners at the Lincoln Network (now the Foundation for American Innovation), we successfully organized a broad coalition to advance an increase to Member Representational Allowances, which covers House members’ office expenses including staff salaries. Because member office budgets are often the first to go on the chopping block, we and our allies remain vigilant to protect Congress’s lifeblood, its staff.
- We successfully pushed for a wage floor for Hill staff. Now, House members are required to pay their staff at least a living wage of at least $45,000 a year. The Senate does not have an explicit staff pay floor like in the House, but the FY2023 omnibus bill provided additional funding for each Senate office to cover a minimum annual pay for full-time staff at $45,000, matching the Speaker pay order in the House. Before 2022, one-in-eight staffers earned less than a living wage.
- We relentlessly championed unionization rights for Hill staff, which the House granted to its staff in 2022. Learn more about our campaign to let Hill staff unionize and ongoing efforts to protect and expand those rights in the Senate.
- We pressured the House and Senate to grant their staff overtime pay they deserve, in collaboration with the Congressional Progressive Staff Association and the Congressional Workers Union. House staff won this right in late 2022, finally enjoying the same rights Executive branch and private sector employees have received for years. We continue to push for the Senate to adopt overtime pay for its staff.
- After our prodding, Congress and now pay its interns more than the DC minimum wage, a reversal of a longstanding Washington tradition of unpaid and underpaid internships that prevented many capable young Americans from starting a career in Congress.
- We also asked Congress to establish and provide funding for resources to improve diversity on Capitol Hill, resulting in a new House Intern Resource Office and increased funding for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. This will improve recruitment outreach to historically underrepresented communities and support to interns regarding their work environment.
- And on the Senate side, we collaborated with the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund (NALEO) and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies on joint testimony that successfully made the case for the creation of a new Senate bipartisan diversity and inclusion working group to improve Senate staff diversity. This built off our work to get regular reporting in the Senate on staff pay and retention rates.
- We long championed addressing the insufficient child care resources for staff, such as in this report and appropriations request, and House appropriators responded by providing investments to reduce the waitlist, expand admissions, and ensure quality care at Capitol complex childcare centers. We have seen significant improvements for House staff and will continue to push for more.
We’ve nurtured a collaborative culture around modernizing Congress’s use of technology:
The Congressional Data Coalition we co-lead with the Foundation for American Innovation (formerly the Lincoln Network) came into existence after we successfully prompted the creation and enlargement of the newly minted Congressional Data Task Force. What began more than dozen years ago as an informal gathering of civil society and disparate government staff who joined forces to cultivate collaboration, foster data standardization, improve how bills were made available online, and transform legislative data into something that benefits civil society and Congress is now an official operation of the Legislative branch with an expanded mission to help Congress innovate and improve the transparency of congressional operations and legislative documents.
We championed the creation of the House Select Committee on Modernization (“ModCom”), cultivated its development, encouraged its continued support across multiple sessions of Congress and its permanence as the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee. Based on our experience educating members and staff on improving the functioning of Congress and advocating for better policies to improve staff retention — and from our previous work with House Admin and Rules working groups — we knew a special committee focused on modernizing Congress was long overdue and critical to ensure Congress had a venue for forward-thinking evaluations on making the institution more capable and prepared to address the needs of our time.
The important work of the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress continues under the new Committee on House Administration Subcommittee, a move we endorsed.
Our suggestions for modernizing Congress helped shape the official recommendations made by ModCom including expanding institutional support in science and technology expertise to fill the gap left when the Office of Technology Assessment was dismantled in the Gingrich era.
We’ve also successfully made the case for Congress to strengthen its oversight of the Executive branch and to improve the efficiency and managment of government, resulting in the enactment into law of:
- The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act, which established a first-ever, online database of mandatory agency reports to Congress, empowering congressional and public oversight of the Executive branch while fostering greater efficiencies in government. These reports provide important insight into federal agency operations and practices, but can be hard to find, difficult to obtain, and impossible to analyze systematically.
- The Congressional Budget Justification Transparency Act, a law requiring all agency explanations of how they would spend appropriated money to be available on a central website.
- The Improving Government for America’s Taxpayers Act, which gives teeth to Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations to clean up waste, fraud, and abuse at federal agencies by mandating a consolidated, public list of GAO recommendations to agencies, a cost estimate for their enactment, and track the lag time between the issuance of GAO recommendations and agency action.
- The Inspector General Independence and Empowerment Act, a law increasing the independence of Inspectors General (IGs), protecting IGs from political retaliation, and providing IGs the tools needed to perform thorough investigations.
- The Periodically Listing Updates to Management (PLUM) Act, a law requiring annual updates to the “Plum Book,” a registry of over 9,000 political appointees in the Executive and Legislative branches. Now, Executive branch personnel is public record, so we can see which offices are vacant, which offices are filled, and by whom. Before, the information available to Congress was way out of date. A positive side effect of the online disclosure of these positions will also be their increased visibility, which should diversify and widen the pool of candidates pursuing high-level positions in the federal government.
We’ve championed reforms Congress subsequently adopted to make the Legislative branch more open and transparent:
Heeding our call, Congress has encouraged the US Capitol Police to disclose more online. The House Appropriations Committee has directed the USCP to disclose arrest data in a user-friendly format that is searchable, sortable, and downloadable, and is made available on a cumulative basis. It likewise encouraged the USCP to develop a FOIA-like policy and procedure for information sharing, echoing our request. And the Capitol Police have finally begun publishing the important oversight reports from its Inspector General online.
In a win for government spending transparency, the House is publishing highly detailed information about the money it spends on itself, including metadata (or entity identifiers) in spreadsheets that report on the House Statements of Disbursements. We led a multi-year effort to transform the Disbursements from a paper-based to an electronic system, making it possible to track congressional spending in great detail over time. We also successfully encouraged the Senate to publish its semi-annual spending information online, although it has yet to make the leap to digital spreadsheets.
We’ve called for Congress to enhance lobbying disclosure to make it easier to track lobbyists who work for multiple entities at the same time or over the course of their career. House appropriators took note of our request and have tasked the Clerk of the House to create a unique lobbyist identifier system as structured data.
Our Team
Daniel Schuman
Policy Director
Daniel leads the First Branch Center’s efforts on issues that concern government transparency, accountability, ethics, and reform; protecting civil liberties; and strengthening the legislative branch. He co-founded the Congressional Data Coalition, which brings together organizations from across the political spectrum to advocate for a tech-savvy Congress; created and edits the weekly First Branch Forecast newsletter; built EveryCRSReport, a website containing all CRS Reports; co-directs FutureCongress, a collaboration on improving science and technology expertise in the legislative branch; and runs the OpenGov RoundTable, which brings together 50+ organizations from across the political spectrum to collaborate on transparency issues.
Daniel directs the Advisory Committee on Transparency, which supports the work of the Congressional Transparency Caucus, and was a fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. Daniel has testified before Congress on numerous occasions and has been interviewed in the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, Fox News, C-SPAN, and elsewhere.
Daniel was instrumental in drafting and enacting legislation including the DATA Act, FOIA modernization, the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act, public access to CRS Reports, publication of legislative information as data, obtaining a study on restarting the Office of Technology Assessment, and dozens of House rules changes (including the creation of the Office of Whistleblower Ombudsman).
He is a nationally recognized expert on federal transparency, accountability, and congressional capacity. He previously worked as policy director at CREW; policy counsel at the Sunlight Foundation; and as a legislative attorney with the Congressional Research Service. Daniel graduated cum laude from Emory University School of Law.
Gabriela Schneider
Communications Director
Gabriela Schneider has dedicated her career to advancing democracy and the social good. As Chief Communications Officer at Issue One, she led public awareness campaigns engaging former elected officials to champion bipartisanship in Congress, government ethics, and campaign finance reform. As Communications Director of the Sunlight Foundation, she led the organization’s myriad communications and storytelling efforts, shaping media coverage of open government reforms, technology modernization in government, and the rise of dark money in elections. She formed media partnerships, managed bipartisan coalitions, and also organized events, including the first TransparencyCamp. At its height, this global convening attracted around 750 technologists, grassroots activists, journalists, government officials, and philanthropists who were committed to creating technological innovations to catalyze new forms of government transparency, efficiency, and civic engagement.
She began her career as an online privacy advocate and grassroots coalition organizer. Gabriela earned her masters in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and bachelors in journalism from Lehigh University, where she proudly served as general manager of its radio station, WLVR.
Taylor J. Swift
Senior Policy Advisor
Taylor J. Swift is the First Branch Center’s senior policy advisor, focusing on congressional transparency, efficiency, capacity, and modernization. Taylor works closely with congressional offices, stakeholder groups, and policy experts to push for better working conditions and pay for congressional staffers and greater public access to legislative information. Prior to joining Demand Progress, Taylor worked for the House of Representatives Democratic Caucus where he focused on budget, appropriations, education, labor, environmental, and tax policy. Taylor worked closely with the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress to elevate the importance of increasing congressional staff pay, retention, and diversity.
Taylor graduated with his master’s degree from The University of Akron, working as a teaching assistant for the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics. While in graduate school, he also worked as a research assistant for Policy Matters Ohio, a think tank focused on promoting a more inclusive economy for all, stronger labor rights for workers, and sustainable environmental policy.
Policy Agenda
Improve Government Accountability
Requests for information: Working to strengthen the House and Senate’s subpoena powers, empower congressional support agencies to obtain information from Executive branch agencies, protect federal inspectors general, clarify GAO’s audit power, and protect whistleblowers.
Proactive disclosure of information: Working to improve the information ecosystem, including strengthening FOIA, protecting acts of journalism, mandating the disclosure of agency reports and budgetary information, and supporting the proper review and release of classified information.
Empower the overseers: Working to provide support and training for congressional staff, to provide each office in the House with an appropriate cleared staffer, and to ensure that Congress has experienced and sufficiently numerous staff capable of doing this work.
Modernize Congress
Support modernization efforts: Continue to provide research and ideas to the House Administration Committee, the House Appropriations Committee, the House Rules Committee, the House Oversight Committee, the House Modernization Subcommittee, the Senate Rules Committee, the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Congressional Data Task Force, and assorted internal and external stakeholders.
Technology modernization: Continue to participate in the Congressional Data Task Force; co-run the Congressional Data Coalition; co-run the OpenGov Roundtable; continue to build technology, tools, and resources like everycrsreport.com and BillMap; continue to serve as a resource and partner for organizations interested in technological modernization; continue to push for open source development of tools inside Congress; continuing to push for and attend annual public meetings with the Library of Congress; and continue to participate in the annual Congressional Legislative Data & Transparency Conference.
Establish support offices: Encourage the Senate to create a Whistleblower Ombuds Office, in parallel with the House’s office; encourage the Senate to create an Office of Diversity and Inclusion, in parallel with the House’s office; encourage the Senate to create an Office of Senate Ethics, in parallel with the House’s office; encourage both chambers to create a Chief Data Officer.
Power dynamics: Research, write, and educate on power dynamics inside the Congress through the First Branch Forecast newsletter and through recommendations for updating party rules for House Democrats and Republicans.
Data for Congress: Encourage the publication of all bills, resolutions, and committee reports online prior to consideration by the full chamber; the publication of all committee videos online in a central location accompanied by transcriptions, testimony, and related witness information; the publication of all committee documents online in a central location; the creation of tools to support the various congressional workflows; the publication of CRS reports and other support agency reports online in a structured data format; the creation and management of tools that allow Congress and the public to understand the history of a legislative idea and how an amendment would change the law.
Data about Congress: Encourage Congress to release more information about its activities, including through publishing of the Statements of Disbursements and Statement of Accounts online as structured data accompanied by metadata; to release Dear Colleague Letters; to modernize lobbyist tracking data; to publish online documents available at Legislative Resource Center information; to publish Legislative branch congressional budget justifications; and to publish of appropriations information as structured data.
Improve the Congressional Workplace
Capable staff: Support the recruitment, growth, and retention of capable and experienced congressional staff by conducting research and providing education on staff pay and retention rates; staff diversity; staff benefits; and staff resources; providing guidance concerning the right to unionize; ensuring the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights is using up-to-date regulations; and supporting efforts like the Staff Academy that allow staff to learn new skills.
Safe environment: Continue to push for the Capitol Police and the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms to provide a safe workplace for all that allows the public to engage directly with their elected officials; ensure that congressional continuity is ensured through appropriate policies and technologies that allow it to continue working even in the most adverse circumstances.
Respect the Power of the Purse
Spending: Reassert the Legislative branch’s constitutional authority over the nation’s tax and spending policy.
Apportionment: Bring transparency and accountability to the apportionment process.
Oversight: Strengthen the ability of the Government Accountability Office to monitor Executive branch compliance with budget and appropriations.
Protect the Rule of Law
Secret Law: Rein in the use of secret law by pushing for transparency for authoritative opinions by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, opinions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, etc.
National security: Improve congressional oversight of national security issues by reforming the congressional oversight committees, protecting whistleblowers, and ensuring the integrity of congressional oversight processes.
War and Peace: Rein in Executive use of emergency powers and ensure Congress’s role in declaring war and peace is respected.
Contact Us
Media:
Are you a reporter on deadline or otherwise need to get in touch? We’d love to hear from you!
Our team and subject matter experts are available to assist journalists and researchers with expertise on a wide range of topics related to congressional operations and government transparency, not limited to appropriations, Freedom of Information Act, modernizing Congress, public oversight, unions in Congress, the US Capitol Police, and more.
Please contact our Communications Director Gabriela Schneider (gab at popvox dot org) to set up an interview.
Everyone:
For general inquiries, please contact us through the form below.