NY Times jumps on the In Box House reform bandwagon
In Box readers have been sending me emails this morning pointing to a new commentary in the New York Times called Build A Bigger House.
[N]ow is a good time to consider a similarly daunting challenge to democratic representation in the House: its size. It’s been far too long since the House expanded to keep up with population growth and, as a result, it has lost touch with the public and been overtaken by special interests.
In November and again last month, I published a commentary here called Yes, we need a bigger House.
Congressmen (and, later, congresswomen) were supposed to know their communities and their constituents intimately. They were meant to be people you saw around town, in church, and at the market.
The authors of the Times piece, Dalton Conley and Jacqueline Stevens, make an argument that is sharper and more convincing than mine.
More districts would likewise mean more precision in distributing them equitably, especially in low-population states. Today the lone Wyoming representative covers about 500,000 people, while her lone counterpart in Delaware reports to 900,000.
The increase would also mean more elected officials working on the country’s business, reducing the reliance on unaccountable staffers. Most of the House’s work is through committees, overseeing and checking government agencies.
With more people in Congress, House committee members could see to this critical business themselves — and therefore be more influential, since a phone call from an actual member is a lot more effective than a request from the committee staff.
Tags: politics
It’s the way things are supposed to work. I would also move to get them out of Washington and back home for most of the time. There’s no need for our Congressmen and Senators to spend their time in Washington is these days of telecommunications that are so simple, cheap and effective. Keep them home, keep them humble and keep them working for US, not the lobbyists.
No Bret, no no no. They need to stay in Washington and re-establish some genuine working relationships. By all accounts of the old timers, socialization between tribes are critically important to finding common ground and constructing common cause.
I don’t believe for a minute that elected officials are confused about what their electorates want. The difficulty is that they can’t/don’t/won’t act upon it. And for that — for the Getting It Done part — they need to work together.
We keep them sufficiently humble with the power of our votes…
Frankly, Mayflower, that last point greatly overvalues this “power” of our votes.
Half the people that bother to vote do so begrudgingly walking away saying they picked the lesser of the evils. Our choices suck, if you can’t acknowledge that you’re part of the problem.
Two large barriers to correcting our [broken] political system is reducing the influence of lobbies and removing the perverse amounts of money that tarnish our elections.
Trying to hit lobby industry, that has almost tripled in size this past decade, is a good start though.
I can understand the reasons for a larger House size and thus smaller constituencies. However my personal opinion and I think there is some research to back this up is that it would be a mess. Massive gridlock would occur as every little constituency would now have a voice, with more house members you would have more vote trading, with more vote trading you would have more lobbying. The influence of special interests would actually increase. Italy has a Parliament of 945 people, 630 in the Lower and 315 in the upper. Nice place but they are not known for stable or sound government.
People who make David Duke look centrist would end up in our Congress. In general this is a great country but we have some really crazy people who if the Congress was made smaller would have enough votes to send their people to Congress. It would also increase the balkanization of our Congress with single issue and or single ethnic districts dominating. If you have to cover a larger district you cannot simply cater to the nuts. Is it good to have a Nazi in our Congress or on open member of the Aryan Nations or a member of a Left Wing group who believes that 9/11 was staged by the governemnt? This is what we would get with samller districts.
Mr Rhode, I believe you are correct.