New America Foundation Prescribes Social Technology to Raise Congress’ IQ

The New America Foundation is urging Congress to make up for its lack of internal expertise by opening up more data to outside groups and by creating a pipeline for those groups to share their insights with lawmakers.

The New America report, written by Research Fellow Lorelei Kelly, accuses Congress of gutting its large, expert and bipartisan staff during the 1990s in favor of acquiring facts and analysis from external and often ideologically-committed research groups. At the same time the amount of information available about proposed legislation increased dramatically with the development of the Internet as did the amount of constituent mail lawmakers were receiving. The result is that the best-funded and loudest advisors receive the most attention, Kelly said. Members of Congress rarely have a solid understanding of the broad implications of legislation they’re voting on or how it will affect their districts, she said. The report recommends that Congress make more data from the Congressional Research Service and other sources publicly available and that members and committees establish relationships with universities and other expert pools to provide nonpartisan analysis. The report also recommends restoring early-90s funding levels for Congressional staff and suggests the Republican and Democratic caucuses pool resource to pay for nonpartisan staffers.