Congress finally introduced its FY 2023 omnibus bill. In the spreadsheet here and below, we broke down the Legislative Branch line items contained in the FY 2023 omnibus bill and compared them to FY 2021 and FY 2022. The spreadsheet also contains the requests published in the president budget, the appropriations levels supported by the […]
On Thursday, July 28, 2022, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patrick Leahy published 12 appropriations bills and accompanying explanatory statements, including the FY 2023 Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations bill and explanatory statement. To help keep track of all explanatory statement items requested by the Senate Legislative Branch Subcommittee, we built a public spreadsheet that maintains a […]
TOP LINE This week. Happy Memorial Day recess—both chambers are out this week, giving us (and hopefully you, too) a chance to take a break, or at least slow down. Approps. We were expecting Senate Leg branch approps hearing with the USCP, GAO, and Library of Congress last week, but it was postponed. Stay tuned. […]
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 […]
by Jason Briefel and Maggi Molina A president will appoint more than 4,000 individuals to serve in an administration, yet “there is no single source of data on political appointees serving in the executive branch that is publicly available, comprehensive, and timely,” according to the Government Accountability Office in a March 2019 report. Instead, these […]
Last year the House released a valuable report on staff pay, benefits, and diversity. We took a look at the data to answer the question, are better pay and benefits really correlated with staff staying on board? The short answer is yes. We’ll be releasing a series of short articles focusing on different variables and […]
Following up on our extensive review of US Capitol Police, we compiled the USCP’s Statement of Disbursements (the ones we could find). USCP is legally required to submit these statements to Congress, but they are not available online. Here’s our letter to USCP asking for the last five years of statements:
(Update, 04/24/20): On April 3, we provided a summary of all the congressional actions related to signing statements. Here is an analysis of the common themes in the legislation: Requires the Executive to give Congress notice and reasoning for all statements. Bars government entities (including state and federal courts) from using signing statements in interpreting […]
Congressional staff are generally overworked and underpaid. Talented employees with vast institutional knowledge are eventually forced to choose between Congress and a sustainable lifestyle; the result is a Legislative Branch brain drain with employees leaving for better paying jobs in the Executive Branch or private sector. On top of that, Congress has a diversity problem: […]
How has the Congressional Research Service’s work changed over the last 30 years? We gathered almost five decades of the agency’s annual reports and built a spreadsheet of its self-reported activities. We found interesting patterns, the absence of expected patterns, and lots of missing data. Our key findings: First, CRS is decreasing its consultations with […]
By Maggi Molina and Dan Lips Congress faces major challenges in 2020—including the Coronavirus pandemic and addressing its significant disruptions to our way of life. With the Congressional Budget Office already forecasting trillion dollar federal deficits through 2030, lawmakers may have less flexibility to authorize new spending to address these problems. One way for Congress to improve […]
For the week ending April 2, 2020, there were 4 Capitol Police incidents reported; 4 individuals arrested. Only 3 of the 4 incidents reported were within USCP jurisdiction. There were 3 traffic related incidents, including two invalid traffic permits. Numbers continue to decline as the US Capitol Complex stays closed and DC’s stay-at-home order goes […]