How Big a House Do Americans Really Need?
June 16, 2023 2:05 pm ET The U.S. Capitol dome, May 16. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images The estimable Christopher DeMuth isn’t happy with a Congress that doesn’t debate policies and that crafts legislative bargains behind closed doors (“Reviving Congress Would Revive Democracy,” op-ed, June 10). If that’s a plea for parliamentary government, I couldn’t agree more. Where I get off the bus is when he suggests increasing the size of the House of Representatives. In 1789, the ratio was one representative per 30,000 people. Right now, it is one per 780,000 people. If it were one representative per 330,000 people, we would have 1,000 representatives. They might possibly be closer to the people, but I don’t think that would make for a more deliberative Congress. Cardinal de Retz once observed that an assembly of 1,000 people is no better than a
The U.S. Capitol dome, May 16.
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The estimable Christopher DeMuth isn’t happy with a Congress that doesn’t debate policies and that crafts legislative bargains behind closed doors (“Reviving Congress Would Revive Democracy,” op-ed, June 10). If that’s a plea for parliamentary government, I couldn’t agree more. Where I get off the bus is when he suggests increasing the size of the House of Representatives.
In 1789, the ratio was one representative per 30,000 people. Right now, it is one per 780,000 people. If it were one representative per 330,000 people, we would have 1,000 representatives. They might possibly be closer to the people, but I don’t think that would make for a more deliberative Congress. Cardinal de Retz once observed that an assembly of 1,000 people is no better than a mob. It was George Washington who proposed the one per 30,000 ratio at the Constitutional Convention. Today, that would give us 10,000 representatives.
Prof. F.H. Buckley
Scalia Law School, George Mason U.
Arlington, Va.
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