What's wrong with Congress? It's not big enough - 4 views
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Jeremy Vogel on 20 Aug 12"But how did our national legislature get to the point where only 10% of Americans approve of its actions?" "The answer: Congress no longer represents the will of the people, and it hasn't for a very long time."
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Jared Holcomb on 21 Aug 12With the way this is set up, i think its a well though out article. at first, i thought more people, more power, but its really to let the little guy have a voice, which i think is the biggest problem with the government today. A lack of connection.. Anybody agree with that?
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Drew Koesters on 21 Aug 12George Washington warned us in his farewell address to avoid political parties. Now look at where they have gotten us. A House and Senate gridlocked in a partisan conflict in which none of the average people they are supposed to represent are even acknowledged.
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Mallory Huggins on 21 Aug 12I agree with the general idea of this. I think a Congress of 3,000 people is extreme, but I definitely agree that Congress should be expanded. We have a populations of over 300 million and only 435 people in the House, and that proportion is pretty ridiculous. There is definitely a lack of connection between representatives, because it is impossible to connect with nearly a million people.
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Alex beck on 21 Aug 12The problem with this is that at this point it may be too late to get a smooth, efficient transition to any other form than the one we have, and the few ways there are to acheive this goal either involve massive chaos, which most find undesireable, or change so slow that we will never be satisfied with the transition's results, whether they achieve our preferred outcomes. Also, the shift could cause exploitation of congress that would be even worse for the people than our current predicament. So really, we are almost as well off just starting from the roots and reconstructing in the new way, despite the many downsides.... At least as far as I can tell. I can't say I have given the topic much thought.
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Ashtyne Madsen on 21 Aug 12I agree with the article and these comments because the House is supposed to represent "normal" Americans and and they wouldn't be able to do that with so few representatives.
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Jeremy Vogel on 21 Aug 12Alex I have to disagree that the few ways to do this would cause chaos or move slowly. With the current setup we redraw districts and move them from one state to another based on population data received from the census every ten years. So lets say that today we decide to double the number of representatives to 870 starting in 2020 (the next census year). That would mean we would have 8 years to figure out the math, which can't be all that difficult in my opinion if they are able to do it every ten years when they redistrict, to find out how many congressional districts each state gets. Then when the new state district maps are drawn in 2020 after the census instead of drawing 435 districts we would draw 870. This way could work because we already move districts from state to state with population changes so states have experienced additional congressional districts being added to their district maps. I hope this made sense, it did in my head.
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Alex beck on 22 Aug 12It did in fact make good sense. I concede that the physical transition, so to speak, would be fairly simple, however I am more concerned that the math would not be that simple to adjust and still aquire the desired results. I can't say that I have a lot of reasonably credible sources, but as a citizen, my concerns would be that the transition would just cause the same issues, but with twice the ammount of people being paid to do the job. As far as I could tell, there is no way to be certain that the adjustment would work as desired, so my question is: do you have a method that would ensure that we would not just be paying twice the price for the same job with the comfort of more poeple doing it? I don't think I saw anything regarding that, so I hope that is a reasonable question.
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Eric Cavanaugh on 22 Aug 12I think Congress is just bossy............ that is why they are not big enough..