The Congressional Research Service CRS

In 1914, at the urging of Progressive reformers who wanted legislators to have expertise of their own rather than relying on lobbyists, Congress created a Legislative Reference Service within the Library of Congress to answer members' questions. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 expanded it and renamed it the Congressional Research Service, with a mandate to provide analysis to Congress on all legislative questions, independent of the executive branch and of any party.

CRS works only for Congress. Its roughly 600 staff, lawyers, economists, scientists, and policy specialists, answer hundreds of thousands of requests a year from members, committees, and their staffs, from quick factual questions to detailed analyses of how a proposal would work. They brief new members, testify at hearings, and write the reports that explain issues ranging from the debt ceiling to the rules of impeachment. The Constitution Annotated, the authoritative guide to how the Supreme Court has interpreted every clause, is a CRS product. Its confidential memos to individual members are never published.

For a century CRS reports circulated only inside Congress and among lobbyists who obtained them, an anomaly for work paid for by the public. Congress directed in 2018 that its nonconfidential reports be posted on a public website, and they are now among the most widely used plain-language explanations of how the federal government works. The Director is appointed by the Librarian of Congress after consultation with the congressional committee that oversees the Library.

CRS's value depends on its reputation for neutrality with both parties, a reputation it protects by declining to make recommendations and by writing analysis that lays out the arguments on each side. Its staff has shrunk over the past three decades even as Congress's own committee staff has declined, leaving members more dependent on it. Leadership turmoil at the Library of Congress in 2025, after the President dismissed the Librarian and the authority over the Library's units was disputed, raised questions about how insulated CRS remains from executive branch influence.