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Bigger Congress Better For Public, Hastings Argues

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By BILLY HOUSE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 15, 2008

Updated: 06/15/2008 12:14 am

WASHINGTON - Has the country outgrown the House of Representatives?

U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida wonders if that's so.

Hastings, a Miramar Democrat, intends to try again within weeks to create a commission to consider adding to the current 435 congressional seats, something that hasn't been done for nearly a century.

"We're getting at the point that where's there's just too many constituents in each district to serve them adequately," said Hastings, who introduced similar legislation last session that went nowhere.

A number of academics, think-tanks, columnists and government-reform advocates agree with Hastings.

Critics of potential House expansion are many, though, including those who ask:

•Why hit taxpayers with even more salaries and expenses of House members, their staffs and offices, which now total more than $1 million a year per member?

•Why would elected representatives vote to dilute their own power?

•Who needs more politicians making an already unwieldy legislative process even more unmanageable?

•And how would we fit all the lawmakers into one chamber or building?

District Size Has Tripled

But proponents suggest the Founding Fathers would be shocked at how many people each House member now represents in Washington.

They might also be surprised to see how the House compares to other democratic countries' representative bodies.

For instance, the German Bundestag has one member for every 123,752 citizens, and the Canadian House of Commons has one member for every 103,924 citizens.

Because of this nation's population growth, however, the average congressional district has more than tripled in size, from about 200,000 people to 640,000 since the current 435-seat setup was put into place in 1911. That's roughly equal in population to the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Largo combined.

And if population trends continue, each member by 2040 will represent 920,000 residents, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

That's a far cry from the 30,000 citizens each of the original 65 House members represented in 1789. The idea was for members to be closely bound to their constituencies.

"It is easy to imagine George Washington's horror if he'd known the average district in 2008 would contain close to 700,000 people," wrote Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, in the spring edition of the quarterly, "Democracy: A Journal of Ideas."

"No wonder citizens agree in most polls that 'no one is listening to me and my family;' they likely have never met their member of Congress," added Sabato.

It's not that the U.S. Constitution requires the number of representatives to remain at 435. In fact, the Constitution only sets a minimum of one House member per state, and a cap that is based on population so that the number of representatives does not exceed one for every 30,000.

Congress, with approval of the president, is free to choose a House size within these boundaries.

So, throughout most of the 19th century and until 1911, the House grew along with the nation's population, according to the Congressional Research Service.

After the census in 1920, the House again considered a bill to increase the House size, this time to 483 seats, the minimum so that no state would lose a representative.

But rather than again increase the size, a new cost-savings idea took root - to freeze the number of seats, according to the research service.

The debate over whether to expand or keep the number of seats the same came to a close with passage of the "The Permanent Reapportionment Act of 1929," setting the 435-seat size in law.

Even before the 1929 act's passage some opponents suggested the limit was arbitrary.

"Why not 400? Why not 300? Why not 250, 450, 535, or 600? Why is this number 435 sacred?" Missouri Democratic Rep. Ralph Lozier asked - in 1928.

By 1995, however, congressional researchers wrote in a report: "Whatever the motivations, changing the size of the House requires altering a strong 20th-Century tradition."

'Bigger Is Better'

This summer, the Maryland-based nonprofit group FairVote plans as part of its "Fix the House" campaign to raise awareness that Congress' size can be increased.

"From our perspective, bigger is better considering the population growth," said David Moon, the program director of the group.

Moon said people just don't realize the size of the House can be changed.

Hastings and Moon say they don't have a specific number of new seats in mind.

But increasing the size of the House, said Hastings, could foster more personal interaction between members of Congress and their constituents, and most importantly, better representation for the American people.

He also suggested the demand to raise so much campaign money would not be as great. That would allow candidates to stump meeting by meeting, neighborhood by neighborhood, even family to family.

Conservative columnist George Will has suggested 1,000 House members, putting the ratio at about one representative for every 281,000 people.

Sabato suggests a similar move.

"To change how politics is played, we must rewrite some basic rules - and more than double the size of the House of Representatives," he says.

The impact directly on Florida and its current 25 congressional seats could be varied, depending on how the increase is implemented.

Congressional researchers who seek to be neutral suggest other things would happen:

•This could benefit Florida, one of the nation's most populous and fastest-growing states.

Florida would almost certainly pick up additional seats equal to roughly to the percentage of the overall increase. So, if the House seats were doubled, Florida likely would see its number of seats doubled, at least.

At the same time, a larger House could make the Electoral College more proportionate to the U.S. population, while diminishing the relative weight of the Senate's percentage of that vote which combines total Senate and House members.

Adding House seats also would generally help to reduce the disproportionate influence of smaller states in the presidential election.

•Creating less-populous House districts would make the process of constructing majority ethnic and racial minority districts less difficult.

•Substantial changes would be required in Capitol office building room assignments and in the House's already-cramped seating.

Additional House seats also could help to eliminate what has occurred every 10 years with reapportionment - that some states lose seats even though their populations have continued to grow, just not as fast as other states.

A larger House would require some additional spending, Sabato and other proponents concede. But they say that legislative operations comprise a small fraction of the federal budget.

Anyhow, they say individual members' staffs could be held constant or be made smaller with fewer constituents for each.

Regarding fears that a larger Congress would be unwieldy and never get anything done, proponents note that the House already does most of its work in committee.

And they say fears that no chamber could hold a larger House do not take into account modern technology, which would not require members to necessarily be in one location.

The notion of increasing Congress' size has been raised in the Capitol before, including by Hastings in previous bills.

So far, such legislation has not gone far. Hastings' bill last session to create a 17-member commission to study the idea attracted just one co-sponsor. And there remains significant opposition to the idea of a bigger Congress.

"We'd oppose the measure," said Peter Sepp, vice president of the Alexandria, Va.-based National Taxpayers Union, a fiscally conservative watchdog group. "There are already enough opportunities for mischief and waste of taxpayer dollars with 435 members. Adding more to the mix won't help taxpayers."

But Hastings remains optimistic, buoyed by the increased public attention and discussion of the topic.

"It's really something that's needed at this point," he said.

Reporter Billy House can be reached at (202) 662-7673 or bhouse@tampatrib.com.

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