Too Few Government Workers?

[IBCoupe]

Article I, Section II of the United States Constitution:

The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative...

When the Constitution was enacted and the House of Representatives formed, the United States population was such that there ended up one Representative for about 60,000 citizens (if you include women and slaves). After every census, not only did we redistrict, but we added districts to account for increases in population. The last time we did that was in 1912, and we're pretty far behind.

The 2010 census said that we had 308,745,538 citizens in 2009. We have 435 members of the House of Representatives. So we've gone from one Rep. per 60,000 people to one Rep. per nearly 710,000 people. Maybe it's time that we got a bit more local control over Congress, no? Maybe not all the way to 60,000, but how about one representative for every 200,000 people?

If we were to go from today to a 1/200,000 position (rounding down), here's how the House of Representatives would look (Find your State for fun!):
Alabama: 23 (up from 7)
Alaska: 3 (up from 1)
Arizona: 32 (up from 8)
Arkansas: 14 (up from 4)
California: 184 (up from 52)
Colorado: 25 (up from 7)
Connecticut: 17 (up from 5)
Delaware: 4 (up from 1)
Washington, D.C.: 3 (up from 1) <--- should be 2, but 599,654 is close enough, and D.C. needs a break.
Florida: 92 (up from 25)
Georgia: 49 (up from 13)
Hawaii: 6 (up from 2)
Idaho: 7 (up from 2)
Illinois: 64 (up from 19)
Indiana: 32 (up from 9)
Iowa: 15 (up from 5)
Kansas: 14 (up from 4)
Kentucky: 21 (up from 6)
Louisiana: 22 (up from 7)
Maine: 6 (up from 2)
Maryland: 28 (up from 8)
Massachusetts: 32 (up from 10)
Michigan: 49 (up from 15)
Minnesota: 26 (up from 8)
Mississippi: 14 (up from 4)
Missouri: 29 (up from 9)
Montana: 4 (up from 1)
Nebraska: 8 (up from 3)
Nevada: 13 (up from 3) <-- The biggest winner: 433% of their old representation
New Hampshire: 6 (up from 2)
New Jersey: 43 (up from 13)
New Mexico: 10 (up from 3)
New York: 97 (up from 28)
North Carolina: 46 (up from 13)
North Dakota: 3 (up from 1)
Ohio: 57 (up from 17)
Oklahoma: 18 (up from 5)
Oregon: 19 (up from 5)
Pennsylvania: 63 (up from 19)
Rhode Island: 5 (up from 2)
South Carolina: 22 (up from 6)
South Dakota: 4 (up from 1)
Tennessee: 31 (up from 9)
Texas: 123 (up from 32)
Utah: 13 (up from 3) <-- Tied with Nevada
Vermont: 3 (up from 1)
Virginia: 39 (up from 11)
Washington: 33 (up from 9)
West Virginia: 9 (up from 3)
Wisconsin: 28 (up from 8)
Wyoming: 2 (up from 1)

Whaddaya think?

[Eikon]

I'm against any idea that sends another 132 Californians to DC to make laws.

[IBCoupe]

I'm against any idea that sends another 132 Californians to DC to make laws.

Then you might want to start castrating Californians. The House of Representatives is designed to be based on population.

[Eikon]

I'm against any idea that sends another 132 Californians to DC to make laws.

Then you might want to start castrating Californians. The House of Representatives is designed to be based on population.

Sounds like a plan!

The biggest reason against the idea is money:
In 2008 it cost $1.2B to fund the house of reps. mainly for the personnel and office expenses of individual Senators; and the salaries of officers and their employees.
I imagine that amount is higher in 2011. Now you want to add 3.5X to that number... That's another $4.2B in taxpayer dollars to create even more gridlock in Washington.

Though... imagine how happy the media would be with another 1200 people trying to buy their way into Washington by spending millions on ad dollars.

[IBCoupe]

Well, there's no reason that Congress can't cap its staffing numbers. And chances are, the media would see less action. Elections would be more local, and each seat would be worth less to lobbyists.

Maybe costs would go up, but we'd get better government, with more citizen involvement.

[Eikon]

The only thing that would change is the number of dollars spent accomplish the same things that happen in Washington today. More money for election campaigns, more money for lobby groups to spend buying laws, and more money to support the salaries, offices and travel of all the public officials. They'd have to remodel the Capital building to fit everyone in the chambers. Office space in DC would triple in price. The gerrymandering of voting districts would be so crooked nobody would know who was voting where... It would be a giant mess.

[AZhitman]

^ That.

And the CA thing.

Smaller government means less government employees.

EDIT: NV, CA, FL and AZ would just unanimously vote in government bailouts of all underwater homeowners, the Dems in other, less-affected states wouldn't object, and overnight we'd be twice as "in-debt" as we are today.

[mattblancarte]

The biggest reason against the idea is money

I thought the government had an infinite amount hidden in the Federal Reserve.

[Eikon]

No... the infinite amount is in the Treasury department and the US Mint.. they can just keep printing it!!! Pretty soon it'll be worth less than the cloth they print it on.

[mattblancarte]

Inflation is a myth, good sir.

[Eikon]

You sound like Tim Geithner

[IBCoupe]

It would be a giant mess.

Democracy's like that. Arguably, any bill that alters the number of representatives could simultaneously account for all of those things. The thing that would change that you're not talking about: it would be easier to be elected to any given seat, because elections would be more local. That's the point of the House of Representatives.

The remodeling would have been a lot less painful if Congress hadn't slacked off on this issue for 100 years.

Smaller government means less government employees.

I disagree - smaller government means less government involvement in your daily life. More government employees can be had without increasing government interference with your life. Increasing the number of representatives would make the House more representative of local interests - you'd get more accurate government, and not necessarily "bigger" government.

I often hear people rail about "big government," but then when they go on to describe what they don't like about it, it seems to me that they're making an unspoken leap that says "What I really hate is bad government, and I'm somehow convinced that bigger is always bad."

EDIT: NV, CA, FL and AZ would just unanimously vote in government bailouts of all underwater homeowners, the Dems in other, less-affected states wouldn't object, and overnight we'd be twice as "in-debt" as we are today.

That was tongue-in-cheek, right?

[stebo0728]

The biggest reason against the idea is money

I thought the government had an infinite amount hidden in the Federal Reserve.

No its in the Social Security lockbox remember ...

[stebo0728]

End the lifetime pension for congressmen, and allow their estate to process external income, and reduce their salary, and maybe this could work...

I see your point that a larger sample of America could help improve governing, but unless some of them are willing to work "pro bono publico" Im not sure it will work

[audtatious]

The Constitution is a living document, amirite? (so I am told)

Strange the Dems have not pressed for this as it would primarily benefit them.

[IBCoupe]

In looking at the changes, Aud, it seems to be pretty evenly spread across the board. I'll crunch up a spreadsheet to see who's got the biggest boost and who's got the smallest.

My first guess was that it would benefit blue states more, but i think a slight edge is given to rural states - they've got more space to fill in with people.

[IBCoupe]

Okay, so, here are the top ten, sorted by percentage increased, and if there's a tie, sorted again based on number of seats gained.
1. Nevada
1. Utah
3. Arizona
4. Montana
4. South Dakota
6. Texas
7. Oregon
8. Georgia
9. Florida
10. Washington

Here's the 11 States that saw the least improvement. There are 51 because D.C. is in the list, and there's more than ten because the last three share the same numbers, in 1912 and in 2010:
51. Wyoming
50. Rhode Island
49. Nebraska
48. Vermont
48. North Dakota
48. Delaware
48. Alaska
48. District of Columbia
43. New Hampshire
43. Maine
43. Hawaii

It looks like a pretty well balanced list at either end, politically-speaking.

[IBCoupe]

So this list examines the power. I divided each State's old seat count by the number of voting seats (435), and that was their proportion of power. Then I divided the new seat count by the estimated total number of seats, derived from the national census estimate (1543) and got new power percentages. This list plays out differently. Listed in order of greatest increase to greatest loss of power, and colored according to this page (which takes into account governor and state legislatures, rather than just national elections):

1. Texas (+0.62%)
2. Arizona
3. Florida
4. Georgia
5. Nevada
5. Utah
7. Oregon
8. Washington
9. South Carolina
10. District of Columbia
10. Montana
10. South Dakota
13. Oklahoma
14. Colorado
-----------------------------
15. Indiana (+0.00%)
15. Virginia
-----------------------------
17. Idaho
17. North Carolina
17. Arkansas
17. Kansas
17. Mississippi
22. Kentucky
22. Maryland
22. Wisconsin
25. California
26. Alaska
26. Delaware
26. North Dakota
26. Vermont
26. New Mexico
31. Connecticut
32. Tennessee
33. Hawaii
33. Maine
33. New Hampshire
36. Wyoming
37. West Virginia
38. Alabama
39. Rhode Island
40. New York
40. Minnesota
42. Nebraska
43. Iowa
43. Louisiana
45. Missouri
46. New Jersey
47. Ohio
49. Illinois
49. Massachusetts
50. Michigan
51. Pennsylvania (-0.28%)

Anything less than or equal to 10 points in either direction on that website gets a Purple from me.

So, relatively speaking, the shifts in power aren't all that great, but you can see how they distribute. I should note that Texas had the biggest change - it was the only one who had more than a third of a percent in movement in either direction.

[stebo0728]

Interesting, states with high latino populations seem to dominate the increase

[IBCoupe]

I expect that you'll start to see more purplizing of the House, if this change were implemented - House representation would start to better resemble the State Legislature, instead of, say, State governorships, which can be hit or miss on determining where a State stands.

[IBCoupe]

Interesting, states with high latino populations seem to dominate the increase

As little a relative increase as there is. I think the second list makes it clearer.

[audtatious]

We should all work for the Gov...

Oh, we already do