Congress has spent years confronting increasingly complex technology while lacking the independent expertise needed to understand it. A newly introduced bill offers lawmakers a chance to stop stumbling through questions about artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, cyberwar and social media with Silicon Valley looming over the process.

Four Democrats and one Republican introduced the Congressional Office of Technology Improvement and Enhancement Act last week, before the midterms transformed Washington. The bill would create an internal research hub offering lawmakers expert analysis and advice about emerging technology and its effects.

It may not be the flashiest proposal awaiting the new Democratic majority, but it could become one of the most strategically useful. Establishing the Congressional Office of Technology would acknowledge that Congress needs more than lobbyist talking points when writing laws that affect a technology dominated society.

The proposal also arrives after two years of attacks on science by the Trump administration. Lawmakers now face the dual challenge of restoring lost ground while developing a better understanding of how to legislate amid Silicon Valley’s extraordinary influence.

Rep. Mark Takano of California put the problem bluntly. “Congress cannot continue flying blind into the future,” he said in a statement.

Takano also argued that independent expertise must become part of the legislative process. “We must have an office of independent experts as we face important decisions to guide emerging technology.”

Flying blind may actually be a generous description of the current arrangement. Congress is expected to wrestle with cryptocurrency, blockchains, artificial intelligence chatbots, cyberwar scenarios and the pervasive reach of social media, even though lawmakers have been woefully underequipped to handle such technically demanding subjects.

The gap has left an opening for industry giants to shape the conversation. The six largest Big Tech companies employ roughly one lobbyist for every 1.5 members of Congress, giving powerful corporations an ample opportunity to provide lawmakers with their preferred version of technological reality.

Most congressional offices can otherwise rely only on their own staff members or employees connected to committee assignments. Neither source provides an overflowing supply of technology policy specialists ready to dissect every new system, potential consequence or industry claim.

Congress once had a dedicated institution for exactly that work. In 1972, amid distrust of the Nixon administration and debates involving missile funding, energy, the environment, the Apollo space program and supersonic transportation, lawmakers established the Office of Technology Assessment.

The office was designed to “provide the legislative branch with adequate and timely information, independently developed relating, to the potential impact” of new technologies. After launching in 1974, it investigated questions requested by members of Congress and eventually employed between 140 and 200 people with expertise spanning multiple fields.

Its work covered subjects ranging from gasohol, coal slurry, oil shale and nuclear power to medical technology, outer space and tools for fighting crime and terrorism. The office also examined passive smoking, satellite technology, artificial insemination, missile basing, municipal waste and intellectual property in the information age.

Over two decades, the Office of Technology Assessment produced about 700 publications. Those included several hundred formal assessments, some running hundreds of pages, that gave lawmakers an independent source of information beyond presidential administrations, corporate interests and partisan leadership.

That resource disappeared after the 1994 Republican Revolution, when Speaker Newt Gingrich imposed deep cuts on congressional staffing budgets. Although the cuts were presented as a way to save money, former Republican policy staffer Bruce Bartlett argued that Gingrich wanted to “centralize power in the speaker’s office” by depriving rank and file lawmakers of resources that could help them challenge him.

Bartlett described Gingrich as someone who “always considered himself to be the smartest guy in the room and long chaffed at being corrected by experts when he cooked up some new plan.” House Republicans did not pass a new law abolishing the technology office, but instead eliminated its budget and allowed it to disappear.

Attempts to revive the office have followed, reflecting the bitter irony that Congress abandoned its source of independent technical knowledge just as another technology boom gained momentum. The proposed Congressional Office of Technology could finally restore that capacity for members of both parties who genuinely want to write better laws.

Some Republicans may remain committed to President Donald Trump’s war on facts, but independent research would still benefit lawmakers willing to engage seriously with emerging technology. Democrats should make passage a priority when the new Congress is sworn in this January.

The best moment to restore this expertise passed years ago. The next best opportunity is now, as public demand for federal regulation of Big Tech grows and Congress faces technology questions too consequential to outsource to the companies demanding its attention.