Polly Dogood

A Proposal for a Larger House

Wherein the Author observes that her Representative has grown too distant to know her, recalls the only Speech General Washington made at the Convention, and proposes that the People's House be enlarged to fit the People.

To the Readers of this Publick Blog,

In 1793 a Member of the House of Representatives answered to about thirty-three thousand People. He knew a good many of them. He had very likely bought a Horse from one, quarrelled with another over a Fence, and stood beside a third in Church. When he went to Philadelphia, he went as a Neighbour.

Today your Member answers, on Average, to 761,169 People. In Delaware the one Member answers to 990,837. I do not suppose many of them have sold him a Horse.

It may seem to you, as it does to me, that the Country grows less democratic by the Year. Since the Supreme Court's Decision of 2010, the great Fortunes may spend without Limit to choose our Representatives. Our Economy has two Tiers, one for the Few and another for the rest of us, and our Laws seem enforced, or not, upon a Whim. I would only point out that we have been growing less democratic for a long while, by a Measure few People notice.

Since 1929 the House has not grown at all, while the People it represents have nearly tripled. Every Member now answers for more of us, and so each of us counts for less with him. The House has filled with those who can afford a Television Market rather than those who know the Neighbours. When our Share of our own Representative shrinks with every Census, is it any Wonder that the rest of our Democracy has shrunk with it?

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The only Speech General Washington made

General Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention for four Months and, as was proper for the Chair, kept his Opinions to himself. He spoke to the Substance of the Debate exactly once, on the last Day, when the Document was already engrossed and ready for signing.

The Draft then allowed one Representative for every forty thousand People. Mr. Madison recorded that the General rose to say that "The smallness of the proportion of Representatives had been considered by many members of the Convention an insufficient security for the rights & interests of the people," and that it "had always appeared to himself among the exceptionable parts of the plan." He asked that forty thousand be changed to thirty thousand. The Convention agreed at once, without a single Objection. Mr. Madison added: "This was the only occasion on which the President entered at all into the discussions of the Convention."

Of all the Things the Father of his Country might have spent his only Speech upon, he chose this one: that the People's House be close enough to the People.

The First Congress agreed. The very first Amendment it sent to the States in 1789, before the Freedoms of Speech, Press and Religion, was an Amendment to keep the House growing as the Country grew. It was ratified by eleven States and fell one short. Having no Deadline, it has never expired. It is still pending, should twenty-seven more States care to take it up.

And Mr. Madison wrote in the fifty-second Federalist that the House must have "an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people." Intimacy is difficult at seven hundred and sixty thousand.

How we came to four hundred and thirty-five

For more than a Century, the House grew after nearly every Census, as the Founders meant it to. It reached 435 after the Census of 1910. After the Census of 1920, Congress fell into a Quarrel between its rural and its city Members and failed to reapportion at all, the only Time in our History it has done so. In 1929 it settled the Matter by passing the Permanent Apportionment Act, which froze the House at 435 and has kept it there for ninety-seven Years, while the Country has nearly tripled.

I will be honest, as I promised to be. The Constitution says only that the Number of Representatives "shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand." That is a Ceiling, not a Floor. The Cap of 1929 is lawful. I do not say it is unconstitutional. I say it is un-Founderly. And what one Law did, another Law may undo. No Amendment is needed. Only a Congress willing to share its Chairs.

What the Cap has cost us

It has made our Representatives Strangers. A District of three-quarters of a Million cannot be won at the Door, or in the Church Hall. It is won on the Television, and the Television must be paid for.

It has made Office expensive. The average winning Member of the House spent nearly $2.8 million in 2022, more than three times what the average Winner spent in 2000. A Seat that costs that much is not a Service a Farmer or a Schoolteacher can step into for a Term or two. It is a Career, and a Career must be funded. Running for the People's House ought to be as easy and as open as running for the School Board, the Town Council or Dog Catcher. (In my Day the Office was Hog Reeve, and any honest Man with a Stick could stand for it.)

It has handed the Rest to the Donors. When a Member must raise millions, those who can give millions are the first to be heard. I have written before of Fortunes that buy Power. A House too large to know its Voters is a House too expensive to ignore its Donors.

It has made us an Outlier among free Nations. When the Pew Research Center compared the Democracies of the OECD, ours had by far the most People per Member of its lower House, about 747,000, and the next highest, Japan, about 272,000. The British House of Commons seats 650 Members for some sixty-nine million People, about one for every 107,000.

It has quietly bent the Election of the President. The Electoral College is made of the House, the Senate and three Electors for the District of Columbia. The Senate gives every State two Electors whatever its Size; the House was meant to balance that by Population, and grow. Frozen, it no longer keeps pace, and the smallest States' Bonus stays large. The twelve smallest States hold under four in a hundred of the House's Seats, but more than seven in a hundred of the Electoral Votes.

But the Room is full

The Objections deserve an Answer, so here are the best of them.

"A larger House would be unwieldy." That was the Fear in 1911 and 1929, and it was reasonable then. Members voted by having every Name called aloud, and could vote only in the Chamber. That World is gone. The House has voted electronically since January of 1973, and from May of 2020 to January of 2023 it let its Members vote by Proxy without stepping into the Room at all. The Reasons for the Cap were the Reasons of 1929.

"Too many Members make a Mob." Mr. Madison himself warned, in the fifty-fifth Federalist, that "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." But he was weighing a House of sixty-five against a House of Thousands. Nobody proposes Athens. The best-known Remedies would give us a House of roughly 570 Members, by sizing every District to the Population of the smallest State, or of 692, by the Rule of the Cube Root, which many Democracies roughly follow. Britain manages 650 without Riot, most Days.

"It would be harder to pass Laws." Very possibly. The Founders would call that a Recommendation. Mr. Hamilton defended the Veto in the seventy-third Federalist on exactly these Grounds: "The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones." A House that must persuade more Neighbours before it acts is a House that deliberates. The Framers built the whole Machine to be slow on Purpose.

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Here is the plainer Version.

A Republic is a Promise that your Neighbours will govern you, and you them. The Founders meant the House to be the Place where that Promise was kept, close and plain and within reach. We have let it drift so far from us that a great many Americans could not pick their Member out of a Crowd, and he could not pick them.

So here is my Proposal. Enlarge the House, by Law, as General Washington would have wished: perhaps to the size of the smallest State, perhaps by the Cube Root, by any honest Rule that lets it grow again as we grow. There is a Bill before this Congress to study adding 150 Seats. Ask your Candidates where they stand on it. And on the 3rd of November, elect a Congress that would rather have more Neighbours than fewer Donors.

P.S. The very first Amendment proposed by the very first Congress is still waiting for twenty-seven more States. My Family has never minded a long Wait. Grandpapa waited eighty-one Years to sign the Constitution, and I am told he enjoyed every one of them, the Gout excepted.