MR. GUDE'S STATEMENT Mr. GUDE. I know the hour is late. I will attempt to summarize my statement in the interest of time. Let me just say initially what I said last year when I first appeared before this committee, what I felt very strongly then and I continue to feel strongly now that the Congressional Research Service is one great institution in the service of another great institution; a year's experience in the Library has reaffirmed this in my mind. I would like to draw your attention to several charts, Mr. Chairman, because I think with a few explanations of these charts I can pretty well interpret most of our budget requests and fit them into a comprehensive package. [Chart 1 follows:] 99-100 O 78-55 As you know, in the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, the Congressional Research Service was directed to continue its support to members of Congress, reference and information support, and some research support. It was directed also to begin to give indepth policy analysis support to committees of Congress, and also to members, in-depth research and analysis support. You will notice the climb in the amount of work. This chart is stated in staff years, not in number of requests. The climb in work from 1970 to the present is shown here; it has more than doubled. POLICY ANALYSIS DEVELOPMENTS In the policy analysis aspect, we have had since 1973 these developments: You see the tremendous development of policy analysis, and in-depth research for committees, growing from 1973, more than doubling in that time. The same thing happened for members of Congress; the amount of in-depth analysis and policy work almost doubled. You will also notice that as of this year, 1977, this last year, the amount of staff years devoted to members, both in the policy analysis field and in the information and reference field, is just about equal now to that which is devoted to committees. There are several other things that I would like to point out with this chart. The ability to give in-depth policy analysis and research work to committees has not only greatly assisted committees of Congress in doing their work, but many of our products developed for committees by various innovative means have been utilized to come around and serve the members themselves. Issue briefs, for example, multiliths, materials that have been prepared for committees in their work, when those bills come to the floor or when they come to the attention of members and they need to study those bills, why then these products come around and serve the members. So what I am trying to point out is this inner working in CRS to make the sum greater than the total of all of its parts. CONSTITUENT WORK LEVEL You will notice also that the amount of staff years in constituent work-there is always a question as to how much work the Congressional Research Service is doing for constituents-has stayed about level; in fact it has tapered off a little bit. We feel our ability to serve constituents, assist constituents of Members of Congress, has also been enhanced by the policy analysis and research work and the material we have developed; whether the constituents are mayors of towns, members of the general assembly, or citizen constituents without portfolio, we think they too have been served. We think service to constituents is an important part of a member's portfolio and it is appropriate for the Congressional Research Service. So I think this chart graphically gives you an idea of what has happened in the past 7 years since the passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970. SPACE SAVED THROUGH WORKSITE SHIFTS In our budget request we are mindful this year that the committee was concerned there was no space for the Congressional Research Service to expand. As you noted this morning, that is indeed the case. Therefore, our budget request has been devoted to only 5 positions that actually require new space in the Library of Congress itself. Some of the workload for members and committees we can transfer to our reference centers where we can do a much better job; it is not just a matter that we can give quicker service from these reference centers, but with the facilities there, such as the microfiche collection, the cathode ray tubes, we can give a tremendous amount of service and we can keep a high level of production. Also, we can better use the same facilities in our Congressional Reference Division by the night shift employees we requested without requiring additional space. The night shift employees in the Congressional Reference Division can utilize very valuable automated machinery, materials and files and put them to double duty. A good bit of our request is in the category of night shift personnel, and also additional personnel to staff the reference centers which, as I indicated, are closer to the members' offices and also can provide valuable space which we don't have available in the Library. [Chart 2 follows:] |