Congressional Research Service

U.S. nonpartisan legislative research agency

Background

The CRS was established in 1914 as the Legislative Reference Service, created at the initiative of Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette and Representative John M. Nelson to give Congress an in-house research capacity modeled on state-level legislative reference bureaus. For its first five decades it focused mainly on locating facts and documents rather than conducting original analysis. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 renamed the agency the Congressional Research Service and substantially expanded its mission, directing it to produce its own in-depth policy and legal analysis rather than simply retrieving outside sources. Since then CRS has grown into Congress's primary nonpartisan think tank, employing several hundred subject-matter experts — attorneys, economists, and policy analysts — who respond to requests from any member or committee regardless of party. Its reports are prepared confidentially for congressional clients and are not formally released to the public, though many are made available through third-party repositories such as EveryCRSReport.com. The agency has faced periodic criticism that its reports should be made directly and uniformly available to citizens who fund them, rather than circulating selectively. CRS does not publish news, endorse legislation, or recommend policy outcomes; its mandate is to present objective analysis of options and their likely consequences, making it distinct from advocacy-oriented think tanks.

Sources

1. Congressional Research Service — Wikipedia
2. History of CRS — Library of Congress
3. The Congressional Research Service and the American Legislative Process — Congress.gov
4. About the Congressional Research Service — Constitution Annotated, Congress.gov
5. Congressional Research Service — USAGov
6. Every CRS Report — EveryCRSReport.com
7. It's Time To Make Taxpayer-Funded Congressional Reports Available To The Public — R Street / Harvard

Profile compiled 2026-08-02; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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