It is time to double the size of The House of Representatives
Double the size of the House of Representatives.
We have lost the closeness of our Representatives.
The 435 house membership has not increased since 1911.
United States Population in 1911 was 93,863,000.
Today The United States population is estimated around 300,000,00.
Since 1911 the United States population has over tripled.
Yet the House of Representatives remains the same.
The people have lost the representation we need. Someone who is close and is easy at hand to talk to. Most congressional districts have near 700,000 people. This is to high to have an effective representation. There are areas that one party always wins. Even though 40 percent or more of the population vote the other way. By doubling the size of the representatives in the house. More people will be truely represented. This would also open the doors to the third parties. Making it easier for them to flourish. It is time to double the size of the House of Representatives.
Don't say that it would cost too much. Look at the money they are throwing around now. The cost would comparing to what is going on now minimal.
Yes it would make congress less controllable. That is what we need. We don't need this non-partisan crap.
not a bad idea.... how many
not a bad idea.... how many of those seats could we fill with Ron Paul republicans???
"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
-Thomas Jefferson
I am more concerned about the return of my money than the return on my money. --Mark Twain
“A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” (Prov. 22:3; 27:12 KJV)
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Misalignment of prioities in the house
IT is time to restructure the value of land mass ..The cities are telling everyone how to live, while the land feeds their faces...
you-no
Triple
The Elite get their power by manipulating large groups (The "Herd Mentality").
The smaller the group the weaker the mass hipnotism
Putting aside that the better answer
is not one country of 300 million but dividing it up into soverign states where citizens could actually have representative government. Wait a minute, that's what we started with after Yorktown.
The vast majority don't know their congressman and have no influence. The members of congress represent the special interests, the powerful, the moneyed.
With increasing population it's only going to get worse. Are we going to be China?
Just doubling the members will do nothing in the long term. The increase would have to be much greater than that.
I agree with you
That would at the very least mean that the amount of legislation that gets past would go down (simply because at the very least it would take them longer to count the yea's and nay's).
Also if I understand it right about a hundred years ago when the school system was actually teaching people you had 1 school board member to every 20 people, now it is 1 to every 15000 people.
I guess that it is my belief that government works better with less invisible people (the bueracracy) and more representitives.
What about Direct
What about Direct Representation? That's the best way for the House to represent us. Imagine going to the voting booth with hundreds of candidates, and the candidate you select gets one more point of voting power for each vote they get.
http://www.directrep.org
Read more about it.
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This sounds more reasonable to me....
along with heeding the Founder's wisdom and choosing the Senate the way it was back then...
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Libera me, let the truth break, what my fears make--Leslie Phillips
What's next after End the Fed? Repeal the XVI and XVII Amendments!
But that man should play the tyrant over God, and find Him a better man than himself, is astonishing drama indeed!~~D. Sayers
There is no difference between an authoritarian government from the right or the left...F. A.Schaeffer
Article the First is the Founders wisdom!
The proposed first amendment:
"After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons."
No, No and No. Government is
No, No and No. Government is too big as it is. More members of Congress just means more corruption. Somehow when the person gets elected, the old timers in Congress get their hands on them and show them the sleezy route. You know how guilty a person feels the first time he steals? But after the first time he steals, he then rationalizes it, and stealing then becomes a non issue. I don't see that anything good will happen by having more members of Congress.
If there is one thing I learned from Ron Paul, it is always to say no to any new taxes. To me it follows....always say no to bigger government.
State Sovereignty
Our true power lies within our state governments and our state sovereignty. Everyone has forgotten that the federal government is supposed to have very limited power, and all the other powers are left to the people and the states. Because we have let the fed usurp the power of the states, although unconstitutional, the states never speak up and say hey, you can't do that. Our senate and house members represent a general view of the states in the federal government arena which would be all that is needed if the fed never overstepped their boundaries. The fed has taken advantage of the "sleeping" states with the slow boil until the states are now too dependent on them. States like Montana are sticking it to them and actually doing something about it instead of worrying about when there next highway stimulus check is coming. Remember if we never allowed the fed to take our money via income tax, we would never have to ask for it back under the guise of "stimulus" and local economies would have thrived. with all the coming onslaught of tyrannical illegal laws, everyone should have a large print copy of the Constitution on their front door, along with this nice little gem. warning all trespassers that these are the real laws and rights and you will do what it takes to defend them.
http://www.lawfulgov.org/proact.htm
Concentrating power will not restrain corruption!
Politicians are inherently corrupt. The only way to protect against wide spread corruption is to put several safe-guards in place to limit their influence. The only real way to do that is to restrict their power and make them entirely accountable to their constituents, which would entail decreasing constituency size dramatically and proportionately. Since 1911, representatives and, by proxy, lobbyists power have been increasing because constituency sizes have been increasing and will continue to increase indefinitely until and unless Article the First is passed.
Searching for a New Direction
HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
January 18, 2006
"The Abramoff scandal has been described as the biggest Washington scandal ever: bigger than Watergate; bigger than Abscam; bigger than Koreagate; bigger than the House banking scandal; bigger than Teapot Dome. Possibly so. It’s certainly serious and significant.
It has prompted urgent proposals of suggested reforms to deal with the mess. If only we have more rules and regulations, more reporting requirements, and stricter enforcement of laws, the American people will be assured we mean business. Ethics and character will return to the halls of Congress. It is argued that new champions of reform should be elected to leadership positions, to show how serious we are about dealing with the crisis of confidence generated by the Abramoff affair. Then all will be well. But it’s not so simple. Maybe what we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg, an insidious crisis staring us in the face that we refuse to properly identify and deal with.
It’s been suggested we need to change course and correct the way Congress is run. A good idea, but if we merely tinker with current attitudes about what role the federal government ought to play in our lives, it won’t do much to solve the ethics crisis. True reform is impossible without addressing the immorality of wealth redistribution. Merely electing new leaders and writing more rules to regulate those who petition Congress will achieve nothing.
Could it be that we’re all looking in the wrong places for a solution to recurring, constant, and pervasive corruption in government? Perhaps some of us in Congress are mistaken about the true problem; perhaps others deliberately distract us from exposing the truth about how miserably corrupt the budget process in Congress is. Others simply are in a state of denial. But the denial will come to an end as the Abramoff scandal reveals more and more. It eventually will expose the scandal of the ages: how and to what degree the American people have become indebted by the totally irresponsible spending habits of the U.S. Congress-- as encouraged by successive administrations, condoned by our courts, and enjoyed by the recipients of the largesse."
Read entire article here: http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=545
An interesting article no doubt.
I presume the highlighted portion is meant to refute my post, but it falls short. The article, while important in itself, doesn't address the problem of continuously declining representation, which is not the equivalent of "democracy." And corruption, at least by representatives, is and was meant to be dealt with through dissolution of power, which is precisely why it's the original first Amendment.
Monopolies, in this case political, are entities of the state and as such prevent outside entities from gaining power. The cap on representation is one the greatest driving forces behind the two party system. The monopoly (or rather duopoly) of the two party system is one of our greatest hurdles and Article the First is one of our possible solutions. The founders knew this.
As I've mentioned before, New Hampshire has the largest legislature of any state and it's consistently rated as one the freest states. The ratio of reps to citizens is 1 for every 3000.
Agreed
I think more congressmen could only make the problem somewhat worse due to more opportunities for corruption. If anything, the number of representatives is probably not that important in the overall scheme.
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Government is too big
Government is too big (you're right). However, I respectfully disagree with you. "Government is too big" is a vague statement. Most excess of government is in the Executive Branch, since that's where all of the Departments are. By having more Representatives in the house you have a better voice. Instead of a Rep having 800,000 people in their district, they might have 200,000. With fewer people in each district, each Rep would have to actually listen to their constituents.
Take Senators for example. There are only two per state, so they have lots of people to represent. We all know that Senators tend to ignore constituents more often than Representatives. This is because it's easier to ignore the people who vote you in, so long as there are more and more people you represent. Make sense?
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Doesn't make sense to me
This notion that somehow these representatives are "the voice of the people" is just statist propaganda. How can someone claim to speak for any large population? It ends up that whoever gets to know him the most (through friendship, bribes, or what have you) has the most influence over his political decisions.
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You probably have good
You probably have good reason to know that Senators ignore their constituents more than the Representatives do. But perhaps the Senators ignore their constituents because they have a job for 6 years instead of just two. And, it is well known that incumbents are almost always reelected.
That having more Reps will make them more responsive to the people may be just wishful thinking. And once you implement something like this in Congress, it will be all but impossible to change back, if (or when) they all become corrupted.
I don't agree that we need to double our reps.
No.
I would move to decrease the number of times they show up to congress.
Its the limitations on what they are attempting to TAKE and DO to us that needs to be curbed.
If you read the Constitution, there is a clause that mentions congress must at least show up once a year to look after the country!!!!!! Amazing isn't it.
Our founders presumed that freedom was so popular and enduring once installed that if folks got elected, they would forget to show up so they felt the need to at least make a minimum appearance per year.
They never thought that it could go the opposite direction of showing up too much and passing UNconstitutional bills like they do 24/7 these days!
This would seem to be ass
This would seem to be ass backwards. And increasing the size would simply have government completely dysfunctional. There has to be a limit because sooner or later the government itself would start to become the mob from the sheer population of it.
The solution is to reduce the size of the fed government back to what it should be. If that was done, there wouldn't be a need to have such a personal relationship with your representative. The other solution I think would be to take the same principles that created representation and apply it to today. In other words, create a regional level of representation. So you have about 700,000 for each representative today. WIth a regional addition, you could break that down by 4 or so and reorganize the delegation of powers (of course, without increasing bureaucracy)
Look at this graph that
Look at this graph that shows the history of the number of reps per population. We've steered away around the same time that the government became VERY corrupt (100 years ago).
http://teapartytroopers.com/node/102
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That sounds like a bad idea
Wouldn't that just be 435 more politicians clamoring to "do something"?
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The # of reps and the amount of legislation is inversely related
As representation increases legislation would decrease.
Where do you get that from?
Do you have a reference for that fact? (website link or anything)
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My statement was inaccurate
I should have said as constituent size decreases the size of government spending decreases: http://www.diw.de/deutsch/41420.html and http://www.thirty-thousand.org/documents/Thornton_NOV1999.pdf
However, it would logically follow that with a decreased constituency size the amount of public bills would likewise decrease. It's evident that the greater number of people in an assembly the less productive that assembly becomes.
Congressman get $150K per year and $1million budget
So, that's a minimum of 435 times $150K ($65million) and a budget minimum of $435million per year.
Let's double it.
1 Term in Office
ZERO Regulatory Powers
ZERO Monetary Powers
ZERO Taxing Authority
ZERO New Law without Amending the Constitution
That is a better solution than trying the dilution method, regardless of what Lew Rockwell says -- I love Lew, but he's not my "ruler."
Octobox
*&^ Constitution --- Constitutional Rationality
I tend to agree although
I don't think we need to double the size persay, but increase it proportionately to population increases. That would not only be more than double, but continuously increasing with no set limitation.
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned it, but New Hampshire has the largest state legislature, which should be indicative of what high representation can lead to.
A larger House of Representatives based on population would lead to smaller overall government, reduced cost of government, less power concentrated in the hands of few, increased difficulty for special interests to control congress (more people to pay off) and increased representation for every citizen.
Just think, if this were the case right now, I'd actually be able to converse with my rep (Tim Bishop) about HR1207 instead of emailing or calling and waiting a month and a half for a reply! And an automated one at that!
Yet another example to why
Yet another example to why things went astray.
At least have one house member per county(Louisiana is divided into parishes and Alaska into boroughs,these are considered "county-equivalents),that would boost it to 3,141.From there increase it to 1 for every 30,000 or have an amendment.
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"All human constitutions are subject to corruption and must perish unless they are timely renewed and reduced to their first principles.'" --Thomas Jefferson
"A government of reason is better than one of force." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1820
Smaller....... NOT bigger!
Smaller....... NOT bigger! If they are reigned in to their constitutional limits, it's a part time job and more than enough members to handle it. All should have a 'day job' to return to, no career politicians.
ok.......I can dream.
Trust in God, but tie your camel tight.
"Socialism needs two legs on which to stand; a right and a left. While appearing to be in complete opposition to one another,they both march in the same direction." - Paul Proctor
Split Districts.
In the district I live in. The Democratic candidate is a shoe in. Doesn't really have to campaign at all. The northern part of the district is very heavily democratic. This is only half of one county. The district covers about five counties. Except for this northern part of this heavily populated northern county. The rest is rural and votes republican. But since this section in this one county is so populated. It has its representation in Washington elected. While the rest of us are held hostage.
There are probably many of these districts all over this country. This should be changed. It would be changed if the amount of reprsentatives to the House was doubled.
***********Ron Paul for POTUS 2012***********
*************Obama Is A Communist!************
**********Repeal the 17th Amendment**********
Double the size of the House of Representatives
We have lost the closeness of our Representatives.
***********Ron Paul for POTUS 2012***********
*************Obama Is A Communist!************
**********Repeal the 17th Amendment**********
Double the size of the House of Representatives
$$$$$$$$$AUDIT THE FEDERAL RESERVE$$$$$$$$$$
Less Government I Say.....
We do not need more lawyers/idiots in the House and Senate.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win!"
GANDHI
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win!"
GANDHI