Tag: Senate
What Leg. Branch Receives in the Third Supplemental
Last week Congress enacted its third Coronavirus supplemental bill in an effort to stabilize the country. The legislation limped out of Congress, requiring unusual voting procedures, a stifling of debate, and an almost unprecedented level of unanimity. The Senate supplemental bill totals $2 trillion, the largest stimulus in our history. While the bill addresses somes […]
April Update: Legislative Branch Appropriations Items Due Dates
Back in December 2019 – which feels like ages ago – Congress passed the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill for FY 2020, starting the clock on dozens of Leg. Branch projects and reports. In January, our team reviewed requests from the Leg. Branch approps bill, broke them down by entity, and summarized the deadlines. For those […]
March Update: Legislative Branch FY2020 Appropriations Items Due Dates
Back in December 2019, Congress passed the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill for FY 2020, starting the clock on dozens of Leg. Branch projects and reports. Last month, our team reviewed requests from the Leg. Branch approps bill, broke them down by entity, and summarized the deadlines. For those interested in looking at the complete spreadsheet, […]
The Undermining of Congress
The Legislative branch plays a central role in our democracy, but for decades Congress has systematically underfunded congressional operations as compared to the rest of government. The chart below shows discretionary non-defense discretionary spending from 1995-2020 (in constant dollars). During that quarter-century, non-defense discretionary spending increased by 58%, but spending for the legislative branch increased […]
2020 Legislative Branch Wish List
The passage of the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill for FY 2020 back in December started the clock on a number of projects and reports inside the legislative branch. We took a look at the requests, broke them down by office, and summarized the deadlines, which are drawn from the House committee report, the Senate committee […]
Coalition Letters Urge House and Senate Committees to Expand Access to CRS Reports.
Earlier today, letters signed by 25 organizations were sent to the Committee on House Administration and the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration urging them to address issues of congressional and public access to CRS reports. Previously, Congress directed the Library of Congress to public current and archived CRS reports, but many of these reports […]
The Legislative Branch is More Than Congress
Chaplains, doctors, historians and architects are part of the unseen Legislative Branch. While most know about the House and the Senate, did you know the US Capitol Police takes up more than 10% of the Legislative Branch budget ($456 Million in FY 2019) and has 2300 employees? This article starts a series highlighting the various […]
How Senate Committees Get Their Money
TRENDS IN SENATE COMMITTEE FUNDING How do Senate committees get their funding and how has funding changed over the last 25 years? We crunched the numbers for you and here are the highlights: Senate Committee spending is at an 18 year low It’s good to be an appropriator; the committee gets the lion’s share of […]