CONGRESS
Yes, Congress Does Consult Non-Partisan Experts
By: E.J. Fagan, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Zachary McGee, PhD Candidate, UT-Austin
We often observe members of Congress blatantly disregarding non-partisan expertise. If an expert says something that they disagree with, they often disagree back without rigorous evidence. These incidents may suggest that Congress rarely consults expertise when dealing with an emerging public policy problem. However, new research published at Legislative Studies Quarterly from Zachary McGee and I suggests that they do indeed seek out the advise of non-partisan experts.
Congress established the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in its current form in 1970 to provide high-quality, expert information on topics that members of Congress request. CRS publishes hundreds of reports each year on topics ranging from explainers on current legislation to detailed policy analysis to the basics of Congressional procedure. Even as Congress has become more polarized, CRS has remained largely non-partisan.
CRS reports have two important qualities that we use as leverage to measure Congressional demand for expert information. First, they are produced either in response to or in anticipation of requests by members of Congress. While all government bureaucracies have their own degree of autonomy, CRS is specifically structured to serve Congress’ information needs. When we observe a new CRS report, we assume that Congress is demanding more information on that topic.
Second, until recently they were not available to the public. Demand Progress, working with members of Congress, produced an excellent database of all CRS reports since 1997. This matters because members of Congress often do or say wild and crazy things when the cameras are on. Because CRS reports were private until recently, they are rarely used performatively. Thus, we believe that CRS reports are a proxy for the true demand for expert information by members of Congress at any given time.
We collected these reports and identified their policy content using the Policy Agendas Project system. Here is how the CRS distributes its attention to issues:
If Congress seeks out expert information to solve policy problems, they will request more information on an issue as it becomes more salient. For example, CRS has produced a massive pile of reports in 2020 on topics related to COVID-19, including policy analysis of the COVID-19’s impact on the timber industry, the banking industry and US-Latin American relations, PPE production and distribution, and how it changed drug cartel activities. If Congress didn’t consult expertise on issues, it wouldn’t task CRS with producing new policy analysis when those issues become more salient.
Indeed, we find that Congress requests more expert information when issue salience increases. As more members of the public identify an issue as the “most important problem” facing the country and as media attention increases, Congress requests more reports from the CRS.
Does this finding mean that Congress always listens to experts?
Of course not.
Expert conclusions often conflict with ideological or political goals. If a member of Congress wants to find a white paper that agrees with their preferences, they can usually find one from a think tank or interest group. Furthermore, some members will always reject even non-partisan experts as biased or wrong, especially when the cameras are on. Nevertheless, we believe that the few debates that make their way to television and social media are largely unrepresentative of the whole of Congressional policymaking. Congress regularly consults non-partisan experts as a routine part of doing business.
