Increase the fees that Lexis-Nexis pays. Or charge more to submit documents. There's lots of solutions that could work to create a site that's usable and free to the American people.
This blame Congress crap has gone on long enough. When will the U.S. court system take its responsibility to the American people seriously? The answer: when people like you stop parroting its rationale.
The US Courts are underfunded and have crippling case loads. Beyond that, is it even clear that any court has the authority to "increase the fees that Lexis-Nexis pays"? Or to charge more to submit documents?
He's making the same argument the U.S. court system has made, sub-rosa, for years, as it's raised fees for accessing court documents. It used to be 8 cents a page. Jumped to 10 cents earlier this year.
What about the $65,000,000 surplus that the service generates?
I'd imagine the system could be drastically improved using a tiny fraction of that income. (Of course it could only get worse if they spent $65M on it...)
It has not been upgraded since then, largely because Congress has not provided sufficient funds to the courts for them to do so (appropriations in the past two decades have largely been reserved for operations or for courtroom construction, but not technological upgrades. Much of the money from PACER access fees goes toward meeting the shortful in the operation budget, because Congress in its infinite wisdom has underfunded the federal courts for most of the last two decades.
(It's wierd that I have spent most of the last two days defending the American court system...)