BIGGER/SMALLER GOVERNMENT

The Gun-Toting Liberal argues that we need to have the kind of congressional representation our forebears had:

Look HERE Y'all... (source: Fairvote.org) – back in 1789, the 4 million Americans at the time had a total of 65 members in the House of Representatives to look out for their best interests. That is equal to a (as in ONE) Representative for every 65,000 Americans at the Federal level. In other words, each Representative had the same constituency that a small-town USA MAYOR has today! In YOUR town, you can write a stimulating and stinging “Letter to the Editor” that can lead to your mayor’s house of cards tumbling down. Just see if your Letter to the Editor against your Representative has such pull… I guaran-dam-TEE ya it doesn’t!
 
Today, we Americans have a total number of FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE frigging Representatives to “look out for us”! At first thought, you might say “Well good. We’ve increased the number of Representatives as we SHOULD have”. Yes, we did and yes, we SHOULD have. But hey - that number was set in NINETEEN FRIGGING ELEVEN (1911 for those of you in a “red state”). But LOOK – by then we had 92 million Americans. According to MY calculator, the power of the People had slipped to one Representative for ever 211,494 Americans. Seems like there's been a little bit of a population growth since then with NO corresponding growth in our individual representation. Something STINKS here.
 
While STILL, we, the People had SOMEWHAT of a voice in 1911 after that little "boost" of representation, more than a THIRD of our "voice" had been ROBBED from us, right under our noses. IT GETS WORSE! We now have 294,451.983 Americans (2004 Census) and we STILL have only 435 U.S. Representatives! This ain’t COOL. According to MY trusty calculator, that leaves us with just ONE LAWMAKER for every 689,655 of us. Also, according to MY calculator, our Founding Forefathers and their fellow Americans at the time had TEN TIMES more representation in our government… TEN TIMES THE VOICE YOU HAVE TODAY!

Yes, The Gun-Toting Liberal is a caps-lock-usin', exclamation-point-slingin', pseudo-cussin'-and-real-cussin', straight-shooter.  You can hear the bullets flying with every post.

Anyway, the idea that we have much less voice with our government representatives is compelling.  I'd be willing to pay for a larger Congress if it meant being one out of 65,000 instead of one out of 689,000.   And a lot fewer decisions would hang on the whim of one or two fence-straddling legislators.

Comments

[Gun-Toting Liberal]

Wow, a linkback from my favorite mommy in LA... thanks, Mom! Keep on bloggin' the good blog :-)

[Michelle]

Good, good point.

[Michael B]

Actually, this is a very intriguing idea. I think it would make life much more difficult on professional lobbyists as it would be much harder for them to influence (you can read that as "bribe" if you want) such a large and no doubt diverse group of Representatives. It would make election time very interesting with so many races being contested simultaneously. But it might make conducting business in the House difficult. How often would a Representative get to address the entire House when debating the merits of a bill? Not too bloody often I'd bet. There are probably procedural complications of which I can't even conceive that would be created by having such a large House.

One also has to wonder what affect that would have on the Senate. One Senator is already "equal" to about eight Representatives... what if that ratio shifts to 16 to 1 or 32 to 1? Does a Representative run the risk of becoming totally irrelevant if his vote is so heavily diluted in comparison to the vote of a Senator?

Still, it's an interesting idea that desereves to be batted around a bit. And regardless, one of things you're going to see over the next 50 years is a change in the number of Representative due to populations shifts and immigration. Some states may gain a Reperesentative (or two) and others may lose one and many districts will be redrawn. Change is coming to the House regardless.