Congressional Capacity and Reform

From the American Political Science Association Task Force on Congressional Reform:

[The] main areas of consensus concerned ways to improve congressional capacity through increased personal and committee staffing, as well as expanded funding for existing support agencies and / or new support entities. Staff retention should also be encouraged with higher compensation, standardized benefits, and improved professionalization and training opportunities. We also had broad agreement on a range of initiatives to improve staff diversity. The task force also reached agreement on two reforms with respect to the budget process: eliminating floor votes on the debt limit and reinstituting earmarks. Finally, there was a consensus in favor of greater institutional attention to the evaluation and deployment of new technologies to enhance both constituent communications and Congress’s internal operations.