On December 21, 2010 the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to government transparency, released a report about Congressional staff pay and turnover. Keeping Congress Competent: Staff Pay, Turnover, And What It Means for Democracy by Daniel Schuman compares the generally higher salaries offered by the private sector with those of Congressional staffers and the resulting exodus of experienced Congressional staff. Schuman also discusses the limitations of this report due to the lack of easily accessible House and Senate employment data.
In November 2009 the House of Representatives began making data more accessible by offering online House Expenditure Reports in PDF format. Since the format of those reports is not easy to search, the Sunlight Foundation created the House Expenditure Reports Database. The Senate plans to release comparable data online starting the third quarter of 2011.
