About Open CRS 

American taxpayers spend nearly $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, a "think tank" that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. Yet, these reports are not made available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained. A project of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) , Open CRS, provides citizens access to CRS reports that are already in the public domain and encourages Congress to provide public access to all CRS reports.

CRS reports do not become public until a member of Congress releases the report. A number of libraries and non-profit organizations have sought to collect as many of the released reports as possible. Open CRS is a centralized utility that brings together these collections to search.

Unfortunately, there is no systematic way to obtain all CRS reports. Because of this, not all reports appear on the Open CRS web site. The CDT believes that it would be far preferable for Congress to make available to the public all CRS reports.

Examples of recent reports include:

• Pension Issues Cloud Postal Reform Debate (June 27, 2005):  http://opencrs.cdt.org/document/RL32346

• Unauthorized Employment of Aliens: Basics of Employer Sanctions (June 29, 2005):  http://www.opencrs.com/document/RS22180/

• Immigration: Policy Considerations Related to Guest Worker Programs (May 31, 2005): http://www.opencrs.com/document/RL32044/