House of Representatives - I Can't Believe This is True

[yvr girl]

I just read that the number of members in this house has not changed since 1911. Why? The US population has tripled in that time. How is that person going to effectively represent so many people.

In Canada, the size of our Parliament changes practically every election. I think that it is adjusted after each census (every 5 years.)

[CO Liberal]

1. Because....

...they realized that the House was getting too large to be effectively run, and that of they kept adding members, it would soon number in the thousands.

So they froze the number of members at 435.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

17. because to follow the founders intent would mean

a more representative democracy, and that is not desired by the 'incumbent party'. As one of the least represented Americans - my house district numbers more than 900,000 people - I think expansion of the House is long overdue.

[NewJerseyDem]

19. MT might get a seat back in 2010 census

Montana really got screwed in the last Census. But, your state has 2 senators and my state is 13 times more populous than your state and we also only have two so that helps balance it out.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

20. I would submit

that whether it's one or two reps, things are out of balance with what the founders intended. Because the fact that all states are equally represented in the Senate was already an attempt to give less populous states a chance to have a say, and a key component of the Federal system -- although I agree 30000/rep would be unworkable, by freezing instead of slowing the growth of the House, I think the proper balance has been lost.

[denverbill]

2. Per the US Constitution, it was set at 1 per 30,000.

Which would give us 10,000 Congressmen if we had continued that ratio. In a way, that would be great, because corporation would have to pay through the nose to bribe legislators.

OTOH, a 10,000 man legislature is a bit unwieldy.

[Zynx]

3. We could at least have as many as Great Britain. That's over 600.

[Inland]

12. Not really...

your basic Brit MP has no duties besides making a quorum and voting for or against. Our house and senate have many more duties that make it impossible to have a thousand member institution.

[yvr girl]

21. I don't pretend to be an expert on the British Parliament but

in Canada our backbenchers (MP's who are not cabinet ministers) do have work to do. They are members of committees etc. They also do things for their constituents (help them fight city hall etc.) Opposition members same thing. (The shadow cabinet/critics need to be focused on their issues as well.) It's true that our legislative process is very different - we don't have very many private member bills.

If memory serves, we have 308 members in the House, and we have 1/10 of the population of the States. I don't know how many Senators we have but the upper House is pretty much irrelevant here as they are the recipients of patronage appointments and not votes.

[Warpy]

5. Dunno why it would be that unwieldy

unless they all insisted on submitting nuisance legislation to make names for themselves. Usually that stuff is killed in committee, and the committees would be a bit bigger and selective, that's all.

And yes, it would make bribery much, much more difficult. Perhaps increasing the size of the House is exactly what we need.

[denverbill]

7. Well, you can't exactly give every one of the 10,000 5 minutes to speak.

I dunno. Maybe it's not mandatory. I suppose you could have the 'pro' versus 'con' sides pick speakers to plead their cases rather than giving every member his say. I doubt many people are persuaded during a session anyway, as compared to getting lobbied outside of the session.

You'd have to build a whole new Capital building the size of a basketball stadium though.

[NewJerseyDem]

14. How would it make bribery more difficult?

Still, most of the power would be in the power of the committee chairmen and party leadership as it is today. In fact, I think it would probably increase the power of the party leaders and hurt the average congressman's ability to affect legislation. Perhaps, the House should be a little bigger because I would prefer to see congressional districts as small as possible, but it wouldn't be practical to make it much larger.

[calico1]

6. Hehehhe, can you imagine

a hearing with 10,000 congresspeople arguing with eachother? Plus where would they put them all? I guess a limit does make sense. I know what they do know is just reshuffle the numbers of reprsentatives to where the population is growing. CT used to have 8 representatives but we lost one after the last census.

[Q3JR4]

4. Wouldn't

that take a constitutional amendment?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. Of Course....

Why we are at it.....


Why does Rhode Island have as many senators as Rhode Island....



More people live in the San Fernando Valley than maybe five or six of the smallest states combined....

[yvr girl]

11. The Electoral College started me on this

Your Electoral College elects the President. (Except when the Supreme Courts appoints one.) Each state has an elector for each senator (2 per state) plus one per member of the House of Representatives. This really favours low population states (which tend to be Republican.) Some states should have more congressmen.

Does every Rep. speak on every bill? Yikes. Even with only 435 people that sounds repetitive. Maybe congress should have a blog! Seriously, voting shouldn't be a problem. You can (usually) manage a general election. Counting 10,000 votes isn't a huge task.

Finding a place for everyone is an issue, but you are an inventive people. It is a solvable problem.

[NewJerseyDem]

15. No, most congressmen don't speak on a bill

Some members of congress only speak a few times a year and some speak all the time. Usually, a bill will be managed by the committee chairman and the ranking member. They might each get 1 hour or maybe more or less, depending on the bill. Then, those two people yield time to themselves to speak or to other members from their party or perhaps those who agree with them on the issue, regardless of party. They usually yield only 1-4 minutes but this too is variable. The voting in the House of Representatives is mostly done electronically except at the end of the vote when a few stragglers rush in and have to hand a card to the clerk to record their vote.

[Dookus]

9. No

the constitution doesn't specify how many reps there are. They can change it legislatively.

[liberalpragmatist]

10. It should be about 650

I guess they want an odd number and since I saw one proposal to increase the number to 483, I wonder if there's a significance to a number divisible by 3. I think 483 would be good, 585 better, 645 great. About 650 is how most big European countries' parliamentary lower chambers are - Germany, UK, France.

They should probably cut salaries though and some of the other perks so that we're not spending extraordinary amounts of money on these people.

Also, any increase has to take into account the size of the House chamber. How many people can it fit total?

[DaveSZ]

13. I don't know

Lower salaries makes it easier for them to be bribed by fat cats.

I agree we should expand the size of the House though.

[NewJerseyDem]

16. I think the House chamber would have to be expanded in some way

I seem to believe reading that it only had about 450 seats or so (I don't know how they all fit for the State of the Union since the Senate and some others show up as well). I really don't think their salaries should be cut. Perhaps, they shouldn't be increased as often and as much as they are due to the "Cost of Living Adjustment" but it is important that poorer people be able to run for congress, not just the rich. Members of congress have a lot of expenses including living in DC and at home and when that other place is NYC or San Francisco or some other expensive place, homes cost a lot of money. Also, in the grand scheme of things members of congress don't cost that much compared to everything else that the government spends it on and it is in our interest not to chase away good congressmen because they need more money. Already enough of them leave congress to become lobbyists because lobbyists make more money.

[liberalpragmatist]

18. That's a good point

See, my concern is that people who don't want to see the House increased, will point to the additional cost of supporting representatives' expenses, perks, and salaries.