Big news! What revelations lie in the reports of the Congressional Research Service (CRS)? We can now learn the answer according to “CRS Reports Leaked“, posted at Moon Over Alabama, 8 Febuary 2009 (hat tip to Seneca):
The U.S. Congressional Research Service provides reports at the request of lawmakers on about every issues Congress decides on.
The Federation of American Scientists has pressed to get these released as they are paid for with $100 million tax dollars per year and are thought to be of decent quality. At least they tell what congress might think about an issue. But except for a few that got leaked to Open CRS most of them so far were kept secret.
Today Wikileak published copies of 6,731 CRS reports spanning over several years and current up to this month.
If you want to know what the CRS teaches lawmakers about:
- China’s Holdings of U.S. Securities: Implications for the U.S. Economy,
- Income Inequality and the U.S. Tax System or
- Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests and the Role of the U.S. Military in Africa
and a thousand other issues it is now all out there for everyone to read and assess. The reports by date list is good starting point.
Update: an influx of traffic has overloaded Wikileak’s servers.
Perhaps the most important finding from these will be the narrowness of the viewpoints Congress receives, however technically accurate. This masks the uncertainty about our data and theories, giving Congress an unjustified confidence in its policies.
Here is the Wikipedia entry about the CRS. Here is their website.
Afterword
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