> The issue is that those who listen to the arguments and make the decision may not know enough to counter the arguments. Sure. Congresspeople are neither scie

> The issue is that those who listen to the arguments and make the decision may not know enough to counter the arguments. Sure. Congresspeople are neither scientists nor technologists. I get that. Congresspeople do have the power to spend government funds though, and they are more than capable of commissioning an outside research agency with expertise in the given area to provide commentary. In fact, this is better than a government agency with only 140 employees. First of all, not all 140 of those employees are researchers. Assume -- generously -- that 120 are. That is still only 120 researchers. The idea that 120 people can be enough to exhaustively provide expertise on all possible ranges of technology and science, etc, is ridiculous. 120 people would barely be able to offer expertise on all the various computer science topics, much less physics, climate science, etc. Instead of pretending that this limited office could actually be an expert in everything, it's much better to be realistic, and just pay someone else to prepare a study, and testify, like an expert witness would. If you are worried about bias, make it so that commissions have to hire two agencies -- it's probably still cheaper than funding a government bureaucracy and giving them all pensions anyway.