Saturday, November 10, 2018

Larger House of Representatives

Althouse inked it from the NYT.  Expanding the House of Representatives actually seems sensible, fair, and long overdue. The downside of more offices is a small price in DC terms, and it would dilute the lobbying money. The article includes the observation that if we had the same representation as when the Constitution went into effect, we would have 11,000 members of congress - one for every 30,000 people, but that would be unwieldy and impossible.  Would it?  We could get a lot closer to them and know more about them, and it would be really hard for party leaders to pressure members into votes or for lobbyists to buy enough to make a difference. NH has a lower house of 400 members, as you trivia buffs might remember.  The third-largest legislative body in the world, after Iceland and the US House.  We have more knuckleheads but less corruption.  I call that fair.

So what am I missing?

7 comments:

Christopher B said...

Information sharing would be a problem. The number of interactions would increase vastly, and I think it might actually make voting driven by party leadership much more common. You can see this vis maverick Senators (100 vs 435) already. There are only so many desierable committees and leadership spots, and a rep would need an even tighter relationship to leadership to get on one. I doubt this has anything to do with actually making the House more representative and everything to do with increasing the power of more populous states in the EC. It's trending that way already but slower than the Dems would like.

Trimegistus said...

It would further increase the power of big states, and guarantee Democrat presidents forever. America would be governed as a codominium of New York and California.

james said...

The number of potential interactions would go up dramatically, but there are only 24 hours in the day and I keep getting told that a human can have a useful circle of only about 150 others.

It seems inevitable that most of those interactions with other members of the House will have to be encapsulated as broader and less personal group-based (read party or sub-party) interactions. A letter from the "pro-ethanol Republicans" to the "anti-soybean tariff Democrats," for example.

"Deliberations" are already a joke; more members won't make that better.

Committees: either there would be more committees (with some overlap and turf wars), or there are more members. Committee_IQ= max(IQ of all members)/Number of members. Membership in the more important committees can be more selective--only the most loyal get on.

Christopher B said...

james, that's what I was thinking re: interactions but you said it better. More possibilities would overhelm any one legislator's capacity to form useful connections, so there would be more voting by clique.

Sam L. said...

I think Trimegistus is correct. That would be a really bad idea.

GraniteDad said...

Why would it guarantee Democratic presidents "forever"? That assumes that Republicans (or conservatives, if you prefer) can't ever speak to the issues impacting cities and win over votes there. It's a very fatalistic idea that cities = Democrats forever. It's one I hear often, but I don't think it's true. It's the flip side to all the progressives complaining about how the Senate "is stacked against Democrats forever", which is of course bunk. Shoshana Weissmann from RSI and CityGOP has done some great work on this, talking about ways conservatives can win in cities.

I realize this is tangential to the larger point, but if conservatives write off the cities, we're writing off future growth.

Armed Texan said...

Someone put a lot of thought into this:
https://mobile.twitter.com/BornProblematic/status/1023068275377430528