Free Congress's Secret Research Reports, Lieberman Asks

Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman wants to know why Congress's research arm hasn't put its massive library of reports online for citizens to read and instead keeps them hidden like they are Bush-era state secrets.

So on Wednesday, Lieberman (I) wrote New York Democrat Charles Schumer, the new head of the Senate's rules committee, urging him to do something about it.

In early February, the whistleblowing site Wikileaks published thousands of Congressional Research Service reports that have never been seen by the public before. That despite the fact the reports aren't copyrighted, and taxpayers paid for their production.

CRS, sometimes known as Congress's brain, creates thousands of reports every year, ranging from analyses of environmental issues to examinations of the legal foundation for controversial government programs.

Lieberman, who heads the Government Affairs Committee, now says it's well past time that CRS put them all online in a central place and stuck a search engine in front of them so citizens can get to the same information that lawmakers get.

For years, CRS reports have been sold by companies to those who can afford to pay. Non-profit groups have also begun posting these reports for free on their websites. Earlier this month, thousands of reports – representing several years’ worth of work by CRS analysts – were placed on the wikileaks.org site. These ad hoc efforts allow more reports to enter the public domain, but they do not ensure the dissemination of the most accurate and up-to-date information.

Lieberman sponsored a bill to force open CRS last year, but it failed to get traction.

See Also:

• Cottage Industry for Congressional Research
• You Pay for This Research. Why Can't You See It?
• Sunlight Foundation Asks The Public For Ideas On A More ...
• Secret Report on Secret Spy Court
• NSA Surveillance Program Violated Congressional Notification Law ...