Reports & Analysis

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Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Advocacy, Announcements, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

Statement on House Unionization Vote + Establishment of Minimum Wage

By DanielSchuman May 6, 2022 3 min read

“Today is a proud moment in congressional history and portends a significant advance in the working conditions for congressional staff,” said Daniel Schuman, policy director of Demand Progress, a non-governmental organization focused on strengthening our democracy that has led a broad coalition to advocate for the right of congressional staff to unionize and pushed for […]

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Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

House Breaks Promise to Committee Staff On Pay Adjustment

By DanielSchuman April 7, 2022 3 min read

Earlier today, the Committee on House Administration favorably reported a resolution to provide a 10% pay adjustment to most committee staff — which sounds like good news until you remember that the House had promised a 21% adjustment, in line with increases to personal office and leadership staff. I realized the discrepancy yesterday when crunching […]

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Accountability and Oversight, Appropriations, Congressional Security, Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Modernization, Appropriation Tracking, Announcements, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

Key Policy Provisions Included in the FY 2022 Legislative Branch Bill and Joint Explanatory Statement

By DanielSchuman April 3, 2022 27 min read

President Biden signed the FY 2022 appropriations omnibus bill into law on March 15th, 2022. Included in the omnibus package was the FY 2022 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill, which contains dozens of policy provisions that aim to strengthen congressional capacity, oversight, technology, and modernization. This legislation signifies a monumental investment in restoring the Legislative branch. […]

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Appropriations, Appropriation Tracking, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

FY 2023 Leg Branch Approps Requests

By DanielSchuman April 2, 2022 1 min read

We were curious about how the requests for the Legislative Branch for FY 2023 compared to prior years. So we took each line item for the requests published in the president’s budget for FY 2023 and compared it against the line items for FY 2022 and FY 2021. The following spreadsheet, which is also available […]

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Appropriations, Announcements and Statements, Appropriation Tracking, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

Key Funding Items Included in the FY 2022 Legislative Branch Bill

By DanielSchuman March 12, 2022 6 min read

The FY 2022 appropriations omnibus was passed by both houses of Congress this past week and President Biden is expected to shortly sign the measure into law. The FY 2022 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill was rolled into the package, and it is packed with good government reforms and significant investments in Congress’s capacity to legislate, […]

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Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

What We Know About How House Unionization Might Work

By DanielSchuman March 8, 2022 8 min read

The House Administration Committee held a hearing on Congressional unionization on Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Congress approved legislation providing for unions a quarter-century ago and the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights (OCWR) promulgated regulations on how unionization would work at the time, but tricky language in that law requires the House to act (by a […]

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Congressional Security, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

The Capitol Police Should Issue FOIA-like Regs — Here’s our Model Regs That Show Them How

By DanielSchuman December 6, 2021 2 min read

Today Demand Progress Education Fund released model public records request regulations for the United States Capitol Police Force. If implemented, these regulations would create a FOIA-like process for the Capitol Police, which our multi-year investigation had previously revealed to be particularly secretive.

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Modernization, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

Strengthening Congressional Oversight: A ModCom Hearing

By DanielSchuman November 5, 2021 8 min read

Congressional oversight powers were the focus of a House Modernization Committee hearing this past week. We were impressed because the discussion went past many clichéd, inaccurate observations that are often advanced concerning what’s broken in Congress and moved to diagnosing the impediments to Congress holding the Executive branch to account and making recommendations on fixes. […]

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Reports & Analysis

First Reactions to Senate Democrats’ Commerce, Justice, Science FY 2022 Appropriations Subcommittee Bill

By DanielSchuman October 28, 2021 5 min read

On October 18, 2021, the Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats released draft bill text, an explanatory statement, and a subcommittee summary for the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill. We reviewed the contents and compared the proposed funding to the enacted levels from the last Congress. Senate Democrats’ CJS appropriations bill includes a discretionary funding level […]

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Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

Congress’s Policy Support Agencies

By DanielSchuman October 22, 2021 15 min read

How Congress makes sense of the world was the focus of a House Modernization Committee hearing today that honed in on the operations of three support agencies: the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, and the Congressional Budget Office. It was one of the most insightful hearings of the 117th Congress. Congress created its […]

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Appropriations, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

First Reactions to Senate Democrats’ Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee Bill

By DanielSchuman October 20, 2021 4 min read

On Monday, the Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats released draft text, explanatory statements, and summaries for nine appropriations bills, including the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee. We reviewed the bill text, explanatory report, and subcommittee bill summary and compared the proposed funding to the enacted levels from the last Congress.  Senate Democratic Appropriators proposed a […]

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Accountability and Oversight, Appropriations, Modernization, Rules, Appropriation Tracking, Blog posts, Reports & Analysis

What Items Are Due to Congress: August 2021

By DanielSchuman August 2, 2021 25 min read

Congress regularly requests reports on strengthening Congress but there’s no central place to keep track of what they’ve requested. To help keep track of things, we built a public spreadsheet that maintains a catalog of projects, broken down by item due, entity responsible, and due date. The catalog covers reforms and requests ordered by the […]

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