Responses to congressional requests take the form of reports, memoranda, customized briefings, seminars, videotaped presentations, information obtained from automated databases, and consultations in person and by telephone.
CRS "supports the Members, committees, and leaders of the House and Senate at all stages of the legislative process":
Ideas for legislation. A 2008 CRS report details how the service can assist legislators in evaluating the need for legislation:
At the preliminary stage, members may ask CRS to provide background information and analysis on issues and events to better understand the existing situation and then assess whether a problem requires a legislative remedy. This assistance may be a summary and explanation of the scientific evidence on a technically complex matter, for example, or it may be a collection of newspaper and journal articles discussing an issue from different perspectives, or a comparative analysis of several explanations that have been offered to account for a generally recognized problem. CRS also identifies national and international experts with whom Members and staff may consult about whatever issues concern them and sponsors programs at which Members meet with experts to discuss issues of broad interest to Congress.
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Analyzing a bill. The same 2008 report also clarifies the various ways in which the service further supports the work of legislators once a bill has been introduced:
If a Member decides to introduce a bill, CRS analysts can assist the legislator in clarifying the purposes of the bill, identifying issues it may address, defining alternative ways for dealing with them, evaluating the possible advantages and disadvantages of each alternative, developing information and arguments to support the bill, and anticipating possible criticisms of the bill and responses to them. Although CRS does not draft bills, resolutions, and amendments, its analysts may join staff consulting with the professional draftsman within each chamber's Office of the Legislative Counsel as they translate the Member's policy decisions into formal legislative language. Members and committees can also request CRS to help them assess and compare legislative proposals, including competing bills introduced by Members and proposals presented by executive branch officials, private citizens, and organizations. CRS can assess the various proposals' intent, scope, and limits.
The report goes on:
During committee and floor consideration, CRS can assist Representatives and Senators in several different ways, in addition to providing background information to assist Members in understanding the issues a bill addresses. CRS attorneys can help clarify the legal effects the bill may have. CRS policy analysts can work with members to decide whether to propose amendments and then make certain that their amendments are designed and phrased to achieve the desired results. CRS also can help Members prepare for the debate by providing data and other information that they can use to support the positions they have decided to take.
Hearings. When a subcommittee selects a bill (or several bills on the same subject) for serious attention, it usually begins by conducting public hearings on one or more days at which executive branch officials, other Members of Congress, representatives of private organizations, and even individual citizens present their views on the bill's merits. CRS analysts can assist in this process by providing background information and reports, presenting a preliminary briefing to Members or staff, identifying potential witnesses, and suggesting questions that Members may consider asking the witnesses.
Subcommittee or committee votes. After the hearings on a bill, the subcommittee or committee meets to debate and vote on amendments to it. If requested, CRS staff may attend these meetings to serve as a nonpartisan source of expert information available to all Members. If the subcommittee and then the full committee conclude that new legislation is needed, they report a bill to the House or Senate for all its Members to consider. The committee also submits a written report explaining its decision's background, analyzing the purposes and effects of each major provision of the bill, and includes other information, such as predictions about the cost of implementing it, that helps other Members decide whether they should support the bill. CRS specialists may assist the committee's staff in preparing some sections of this report, although the Congressional Budget Office develops cost estimates.
Parliamentary procedure. CRS staff can clarify the legislative procedures of the House and Senate, assisting Members and staff in understanding the effects of these procedures and how Members can use the procedures to promote their own legislative goals.
Conference committees. CRS analysts can contribute to this last stage of the legislative process by helping identify the issues to be resolved, by clarifying and comparing the positions of the two houses on each issue, and by identifying different ways in which the legislative disagreements could be resolved.
CRS also performs several functions that support Congressional and public understanding of the legislative process and other issues.
Bill Summaries. Since 1935, the Legislative Analysis and Information Section (formerly "Bill Digest") of CRS has had statutory responsibility for the preparation of authoritative, objective, nonpartisan summaries of introduced public bills and resolutions and maintenance of historical legislative information. Detailed revised summaries are written to reflect changes made in the course of the legislative process. This CRS office also prepares titles, bill relationships, subject terms, and Congressional Record citations for debates, full texts of measures, and Member introductory remarks. The bill summaries were released to the public via THOMAS, the Library of Congress's online database, but are now released via Congress.gov.
Constitution Annotated. The American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service prepares The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation (popularly known as the Constitution Annotated), a continually updated legal treatise that explains the U.S. Constitution as it has been interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Congressional Research Service reports
Reports by the Congressional Research Service, usually referred to as CRS Reports, are the encyclopedic research reports written to define issues in a legislative context clearly.
Over 700 new CRS reports are produced each year; 566 new products were prepared in Fiscal Year 2011. Nearly 7,800 were in existence as of the end of 2011.
The types of CRS reports include Issue Briefs (IB), Research Memos (RM), and Reports, which appear in both Short (RS) and Long (RL) formats.
Air War College of the United States Air Force published a categorical listing of CRS reports, last updated on May 13, 2011.
Letter of Stanley M. Brand
On January 27, 1998, Stanley M. Brand, the former general counsel to the House of Representatives, wrote a letter to Senator John McCain:
Concerning applicability of the Speech or Debate Clause, U.S. Const. art. I, 6, cl. 1, to certain CRS products which your bill would, if enacted, make available on the Internet, I believe that the concerns expressed in the CRS memorandum are either overstated, or the extent they are not, provide no basis for arguing that protection of CRS works will be weakened by your bill.
(See also his letter addressing a 2001 reintroduction of the same legislation.)
John McCain cited this letter on the Senate floor when he was proposing an amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act 1999 that would direct the Director of the Congressional Research Service to post "CRS Reports to Congress" and "CRS Issue Briefs" on the Internet. In this speech, he also noted:
I would like to point out that the Rules Committee has approved a decentralized system, where Senators can release CRS products on their private web pages. I see no difference between the release of CRS material on one hundred independent web pages and THOMAS, a Congressionally mandated web page. Both approaches should protect CRS equally.
I also urge my colleagues not to believe other arguments that CRS will suffer from a huge rise in workload from this amendment. It will require only two computer technicians to set up this web site, and keep it updated. CRS already has a process for deciding which information goes up on their web site for Members of Congress. This bill only asks that they duplicate this process for a public version of that web page. Also, we release paper copies of these products to our constituents every day without causing a great strain to CRS staff. Finally, I have the results of an analysis of state legislative research organizations that do work similar to CRS and post these products on the Internet. None of these organizations have complained of a huge increased workload from releasing their products to the Internet.
Written work-product
Document types include CRS reports, appropriations reports (usually released as long Reports), and congressional distribution memoranda.
CRS reports
The most commonly requested CRS product is the general congressional distribution reports, known as "CRS reports". The purpose of a report is to clearly define the issue in the legislative context. The types of CRS reports include Issue Briefs (IB), Research Memos (RM), and Reports, which appear in both Short (RS) and Long (RL) formats.
Other than a passing generic reference to "reports" in its statutory charter, CRS has no mandate for these products. They are created in the context of the overall mission of CRS to provide research support to Congress.
The reports may take many forms, including policy analysis, economic studies, statistical reviews, and legal analyses.
CRS reports are considered in-depth, accurate, objective, and timely, and topped the list of the "10 Most-Wanted Government Documents" survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology in 1996.
