Opinion Editorial | |
| Wednesday, February 16, 2000 | |
Increasing The Size Of The House Of Representatives |
In his new book, "Completing the Revolution" (Free Press), columnist Robert Novak makes a number of excellent suggestions about how Republicans can regain the political advantage they had after the 1994 elections. One of the more intriguing is to abandon the pursuit of term limits, which the courts have repeatedly ruled unconstitutional, for a big increase in the size of the House of Representatives.
In 1790, there were 106 members of the House. In the census that year, the U.S. population was 3,929,214, meaning that each congressman represented just 37,068 people. Consequently, members of Congress could know personally a large percentage of the people they represented and they knew him. A congressman might even know personally a majority of all the voters in his district.
As the nation grew and its population rose, the number of congressman also increased.
As a consequence, the number of people in each congressional district is now well over 600,000. If the same ratio that existed in 1910 existed today, we would have 1,303 representatives in Congress, roughly three times more than now.
Because Members of Congress now represent such large constituencies, a number of implications necessarily follow. First, they need larger and larger staffs to carry out their duties. In the 19th century, members only had a single clerk. They answered mail personally, wrote their own speeches and even drafted their own bills. Now staff do all this, meaning that members have less feel for what is really on voters' minds. Indeed, some are not even clear on what their own legislation is, since they had almost no role in its drafting.
Another problem is that Members of Congress must rely more and more on indirect methods to reach voters -- mass mailings and newsletters, television and radio advertising, press releases and the like. These cost money, requiring bloated staffs and incessant fundraising.
In the end, alienation is inevitable. The solution is to get back to a more participatory type of democracy that the nation was founded upon. Instead of enacting potentially unconstitutional campaign finance reforms or term limits, why not just triple the size of the House of Representatives? This would instantly bring every voter three times closer to his or her congressman than they are now. It would make members of Congress more accountable and better known personally to those they represent. It would cut down on the need for large staffs and mass marketing methods for re-election. In short, it would instantly solve the very problems that campaign finance reform and term limits seek to fix.
Increasing the size of Congress will bring in a massive amount of new blood that will refresh the institution. And continuing to raise the number of congressmen as the population grows will mostly eliminate the need to take seats away from some states and give them to others. This is a painful and unnecessary exercise that makes the decennial census more of a political football than it need be.
Says Novak, "such a reform would play right into the Republicans' agenda for smaller government [because] Congress would be a less pleasant perk-filled power proposition." It might also play into John McCain's reform agenda in a way that is less offensive to the First Amendment than campaign finance reform.
Srouce: Bruce Bartlett, senior fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis, February 16, 2000.
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