Is it time to increase the number of members in the US House of representatives?

[Harpy Eagle]

Considering what we pay baseball players, Congressional pay is a slave wage.

Congresscritters have to maintain two homes. One in their districts, and one in DC. And DC is not cheap.

Some freshman congressman bunk together and share rent, and some sleep in their offices.

It's not the highly paid job most people think it is.

Considering what we pay teachers and nurses, the are swimming in money.

$174,000 base salary.

That puts them in the top 8% of so of incomes in the US. And, as you pointed out they work on average of 2 days a week.

Make it a part time job and they would not need 2 houses.

 

[BackAgain]

A lot better than he can represent 762,000!

Based on what?

There are many good reasons to do so.

No. No good reasons.

It is a silly notion. And we all know why the OP would prefer it. “Good government” isn’t on his agenda.

 

[g5000]

Based on what?

Common sense. If you can't see why, I can't help you.

 

[BackAgain]

Common sense. If you can't see why, I can't help you.

No. That’s just a dodge.

Common sense would lead to my conclusion.

That you can’t see why is a “you” problem.

 

[g5000]

No. That’s just a dodge.

Common sense would lead to my conclusion.

That you can’t see why is a “you” problem.

Well, I guess it should not surprise me you need common sense explained to you.

Let's take your TardLogic™ and take it to the extreme to show its obvious flaw.

Let's have one Congressman for each state. That way, the urban areas can run roughshod over the rural areas.

Let's take Alabama for example. Rural areas make up 95 percent of the state. Yet 59 percent of the population lives in urban areas while only 41 percent live in the rural areas.

Would you rather have the urban areas controlling one representative, or would you rather give the rural areas a fighting chance by apportioning more representatives to the state?


Fewer representatives also make it much easier for special interests to capture one or a handful of Congressman rather than many.


Like I said. I should not have been surprised this had to be explained to you.

Read the Federalist Papers. It's worth your time.

 

[Lastamender]

When Puerto Rico and DC become states.

DC will never be a state.

 

[g5000]

Michigan was so Gerrymandered. Republicans controlled both houses even though we were a blue state. Finally we got gerrymandering put on the ballot and we got a Democratic governor and we are not being more properly represented.

Beginning in the 2020 redistricting cycle, Michigan's state legislative and congressional districts will be drawn by a 13-member Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission.

• The membership must include four members of each major party and five who are not affiliated with either. 60 applicants from each major party and 80 unaffiliated with either were selected through a statistically-weighted random drawing to ensure demographic and geographic diversity. Half of each pool must also consist of applicants who received a randomly mailed paper application. The four legislative leaders can then strike up to five applicants each for a total of 20. From this final list, 13 are randomly selected.

If you want to see some serious gerrymandering, check out Wisconsin.

 

[g5000]

Considering what we pay teachers and nurses, the are swimming in money.

$174,000 base salary.

That puts them in the top 8% of so of incomes in the US. And, as you pointed out they work on average of 2 days a week.

Make it a part time job and they would not need 2 houses.

House members are in session two days a week. However, as I said already, they also have to go back to their districts and man their offices when Congress is not in session.

Life's a bitch for West Coast representatives. The amount of time they spend traveling is nuts, whereas East Coasters are just a hop, skip, and a jump from their districts.

If you lower their pay, you make it even easier to bribe them.

 

[sealybobo]

As I keep saying, it is already a part time job. The House is in session an average of two days a week.

When Congress is not in session, the members have to travel back to their districts and take visits from their constituents in their district office.

And they have to maintain two residences.

They won't spend so much time fund raising for a job that only pays $100K a year and is a part time job. Then they should keep their full time jobs. Of course that could be a sticky subject. Like, would Tom Delay have kept his job at the fertelizer company that the government was making their products illegal? Would he argue to make those dangerous chemicals legal? Oh yea, he already did that.

We should say if you have $1 million dollars or more in the bank we don't want you in our government.

$100K a year is a lot of money. The average American makes $60K. I want the average American serving me not a millionaire. And I don't want them spending 90% of their time fund raising. Not cool.

Clarence Thomas — who let a GOP megadonor foot bills for him for years — said being a Supreme Court justice 'is not worth doing for what they pay'​

Talk about out of touch


As of 2023, the salary for an associate justice is $285,400, while the chief justice makes $298,500.

 

[konradv]

DC will never be a state.

Why not? More population than two current states.

 

[Lastamender]

Why not? More population than two current states.

The Constitution says so.

 

[konradv]

The Constitution says so.

An amendment would take care of that; plus one would be needed to expand the House.

 

[konradv]

Let's see if we can get them to handle the bare bones first — electing a Speaker, for example — before we think about tripling its size.

LOL!!! Is that going to happen this century?

 

[Cellblock2429]

Is it time to increase the number of members in the US House of representatives?

The U.S. House of Representatives has one voting member for every 747,000 or so Americans in 2023.

The U.S. House of Representatives has one voting member for every 250,000 or so Americans in 1923.

Can a congress member represent 750,000 people effectively?

/——/ They mostly represent themselves.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

All the talk of increasing (or decreasing) the number of — or imposing term limits on — or of reducing compensation because the job is supposedly “part-time” — may be “well- intentioned” but this talk is in fact just silly avoidance from discussing real solutions to the problems of our disfunctional ultra-partisan and often gerrymandered “People’s House” of Representatives.

The problems are many, but I will ignore for the moment issues of financing elections, and instead concentrate on solutions changing the very incentive structure of “winner-take-all” single election districts — the source of many of our most serious problems.

This “incentive” structure makes it almost impossible to elect Republicans in urban districts, or Democrats in rural districts, and thus takes away the national voices of important sectors of society. It effectively cancels the voting power of millions of voters. It thus fundamentally distorts our “democracy” by incentivizing demagogues playing to the most radical elements of their partisan bases. It makes gerrymandering a problem that could otherwise not even exist in a better system.

Here is a fully Constitutional solution to the problem, based on a proportional RCV voting system. Many people are becoming familiar with the advantages of RCV (Ranked Choice Voting), which is already in use in many places and spreading as people get fed up with “politics as usual.”

“Proportional RCV” offers a carefully conceived “gold standard” applicable to democratic Congresses like our own House of Representatives, a logical future step we should aim for in revitalizing our “People’s House of Representatives.”

The Fair Representation Act - FairVote Action

fairvoteaction.org

 

[Blaster]

Shrink Congress, don't expand it.

 

[my2¢]

That would defeat the entire purpose of a bicameral legislature.

Not at all, there still would be a House and Senate. I'd like the House to hold more to the spirit of the Constitution's original perception that each state shall have at least one U.S. Representative, while the total size of a state’s delegation to the House depends on its population.

We have states of Montana and Rhode Island with a representative for every 550,000 persons in their state while the states of Delaware and Idaho gets a representative for each 920,000 persons.

 

[g5000]

Since you are only one person out of 762,000, how are you going to make your voice heard?

The whole point of apportionment was to increase the chances of your voice being heard in order to offset the two Senators per state who are not apportioned by population.

The only way now to be heard is to join an association which can lobby Congress on your behalf. The NRA, the ACLU, a union, etc.

 

[g5000]

We have states of Montana and Rhode Island with a representative for every 550,000 persons in their state while the states of Delaware and Idaho gets a representative for each 920,000 persons.

You have just highlighted the problem, and shown why we need to increase apportionment.

 

[g5000]

Not at all, there still would be a House and Senate.

Do you know why there is a House and Senate, and not one body?

Precisely so that the smaller populated states won't be run roughshod by the higher population states.