Posted on 06/20/2013 6:35:19 AM PDT by The Old Hoosier
It's probably a really good idea to add more seats, given that each member of a 435-man Congress is representing, on average, more than 700,000 constituents, whereas originally, the target was about 30,000 constituents per member....
...To give you some idea of how this all works out, I’ve calculated what Congress would look like if you added 100 seats. Here is the table:
(Excerpt) Read more at conservativeintel.com ...
Not a good idea to add more idiots...it just increases the problems.
The UK has over 700 members of the House of Commons for a much smaller population. Your vote is worth more proportionally.
However, the idea here was that you vote would carry more weight proportionally at the State level and that more would be decided at the State level.
Too bad that idea didn’t last.
True, but more congress creeps means more corruption, more kickbacks, and BIGGER BUDGETS and DEFICITS.
It would look like Folsom prison.......
They already have staff enough to cover their districts. These unelected folks could run for the new districts if they wanted to keep their jobs. We lived in Virginia’s First District which was so long that there were three congressional offices. One each at either end and one in the middle. We can triple the number of Congress critters, allow each one third the staff, and come out way ahead on representation. Ron Barber is my Congressman only because of Tucson’s liberals.
I've been touting a thought all morning long:
We no longer NEED the House NOR The Senate.
All the laws needed for a smoothe operating and efficient, sovereign nation have been written and passed
Neither house is looking out for our American interests, neither is protecting our nation from enemies foreign and domestic, neither have promoted MORE prosperity for America (Does anyone REALLY think we're unable to generate wealth?) ..
No, the Legislative branch is pretty much done, at least for about 20 years.
Send them all home with half pay and obama care and if they're still alive in 20 .. and we want them .. call 'em back.
They are a waste of our resources right now.
What would the Federal Budget look like with 100 additional sets of Congressional staff with all their pay, perks and benes?
I’d rather see the House reduce 100 seats. And send em all home for 9 months out of the year. Make em get REAL jobs. kinda the way it started out.
At 30,000 per seat, that would be over 10,000 House members.
I think if you want to go the route of citizen legislators, the New Hampshire House — which is huge — is a much better model.
Yes, but I can see advantages as well. More people means more coalitions and blocks to get things done. For example many smaller districts that go tea party would have more reps that can band together and have to be taken serious ... or else nothing gets done.
But as I said. If we followed the Constitution and more legislation was done at the State level, none of this would be a problem.
You’d have to cut staff dramatically. But it wouldn’t be hard, since they could all serve on fewer committees.
Less not more.. Here is where it works even better, TEXAS;
The Texas Legislature meets in regular session on the second Tuesday in January of each odd-numbered year.[1] The Texas Constitution limits the regular session to 140 calendar days. The lieutenant governor, elected statewide separately from the governor, presides over the Senate, while the Speaker of the House is elected from that body by its members. Both have wide latitude in choosing committee membership in their respective houses and have a large impact on lawmaking in the state.
I’d like to see Term Limits put in place first.
How about adding 2 from each state to make up the additional 100? Might give fly over country a larger share rather than CA, MA, IL, and NY calling all the shots.
Simple exclude illegals from the census, and fly-over country gets much better representation.
Article the first... 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 more than one Representative for every forty thousand persons (sets a minimum of 100 Representatives thereafter, and creates a floor of 40,000 persons per District), 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 less than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.(sets a minimum of 200 Representatives thereafter, and creates a ceiling of 50,000 persons per District)
We should have one representative for every 50,000 citizens by census. That would put us over 6,000 representatives.
And this could ABSOLUTELY be done. I proposed several years ago that we split up the country into Congressional Regions. You'd have the Northeast Congressional Region meet in Albany or Boston. You'd have the Southeast Congressional Region meet in Atlanta. The Midwest Congressional Region would meet in Dallas, Omaha, Kansas City or Chicago. The Southwest Congressional Region would meet in Phoenix. And the Northwest Congressional Region would meet in Portland, Sacramento, or Seattle.
All of these Regional Congresses would have secured network connections between one another for vote tallying, VoIP, and secure CCTV between sessions. Each Region would take turns in a round-robin acting as the primary seat for each congress.
This would drastically cut down on costs of centralization, and the likelihood of having actual working American citizens as our representatives would be very real.
This amendment, Article the First, is still awaiting ratification and would only require 3/4s to implement. It originally garnered 11 votes for ratification but fell short due to Delaware.
Benefits:
1. Eliminate lobbying. You cannot lobby 5,001 people.
2. Eliminate gerrymandering of districts
3. Limit government action. hard to get 5,001 to agree on anything.
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