An Alternative to TERM LIMITS
An Alternative to Term Limits Last edited 8/31/2019. to include the Wyoming Rule.
– Phil Kurtz, Libertarian Candidate for US House of
Representatives Texas District 9, 2018.
There is a lot of talk lately about Term Limits for
Congress.
I understand
the sentiment behind this. Career Politicians, Special interests, New Blood, or
a lack there of, too much concentration of power, partisan segregation and the
disconnect between the representatives and the district that he or she
represents. It seems that elected representatives come into office with an
agenda and try to convince their constituents that it fits their wants and
needs.
So, to limit power, many have proposed term limits.
This unfortunately takes away the right of you the voter to select your
representation. Some will argue it does not, however, if you have a
representative that you support, a term limit could make him ineligible to run
for office, thus violating your right to select your direct representation.
Some will say, What about the term limits on the
president? The president, does not directly represent you and your district’s
interests. He must administer the will of the Congress. He represents the Union of States to the World. Also, he is not
directly elected by voters, he is elected by delegates of the Electoral College. So, after FDR won a fourth term, Congress drafted the 22nd Amendment to our Constitution. The amendment was passed by Congress in 1947, and was ratified by the states on February 27, 1951. The main point I want to stress here is that our president does not directly represent individual citizens.
Same thing with judges. They do not directly represent
you. Their function is to interpret laws, when they come into question. Funny,
no one seems to talk about term limits on judges. And they are appointed, not
elected, for life.
So that leaves Senators and Representatives of the
House. I would like to limit this discussion to the House of Representatives
because the Senator’s job is to represent the entire State’s interests, not
yours directly. Which is why, originally, each State's legislature chose their Senators. Well up until some States failed at selecting senators in a timely manner and the Senate could not be fully seated. That is when progressives convinced everyone that Senators should be elected by citizens and the 17th amendment was passed. Big mistake in my opinion, but I digress. Let's talk about your representative. The Lower House, House of Representatives, Congressperson.
So, what is the real problem? I notice that whenever
the talk of term limits comes up, it’s never your representative that you want
a term limit on but some “undesirable” member of the House. Of course, not yours,
because you can vote yours out at the next election, every two years. But term
limits would take away the rights of all other districts voters to select their
representation.
OK so what is the real problem. It’s a matter of scale
and accountability…… Let me explain.
When the United States was founded there were 65 congressional districts, each representing about 10,000 citizens. So, the representative was within 2-3 degrees of separation with everyone in their district. In other words, either you knew your representative personally, or you knew someone who knew him. Pretty easy to make them accountable, and if they did not do the job you sent them to Washington to do. You could replace them in 2 years by voting in someone else.
Today the average congressional district is over
711,000 citizens. Texas District 9, for which I am running is over 800,000.
Pretty hard to get to know everyone in the district, and accountability? Well
most citizens have no idea what their representative is doing up there in
Washington. A lot don’t even know who their representative is!
So, what I’m hearing mostly from the “Term Limits”
crowd is that we need new blood. Less career politicians and more
accountability. So, if we had new blood in office, enough to offset the career
politicians, things could change. Accountability might return. And voters could
once again be engaged with their representatives. Some say we should get back
to the founder’s intentions. I agree, so let’s examine what that would look
like.
The House would be 31,000 representatives. The
logistics are barely manageable. Now, turning the clock back to the founders’
model is not practice. Their intent is still valid however. Represent a small
group of people who know you and trust you…., and you know them, or at least
know their group well. So, what is the number? How many
representatives do we need to truly reflect the will of the citizens?
There is evidence that
framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended
that the total population of Congressional districts never exceed
50 to 60 thousand. Note: art.1 section 2 US constitution……” The Number of Representatives shall not exceed
one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative”
…. So that would be the max number of reps.
And the number of
Congressional districts grew in proportion to the population until 1913.After
the 13th census in 1910 Congress set the size of the House at 435 (effective
with the 63rd Congress which commenced in 1913). Ten years later, after the
14th census in 1920, the members of the House were unable to reach agreement on
a reapportionment bill and, for the first time in history, Congress failed to
fulfill its constitutional obligation to reapportion the House. Thus, the
apportionment of the House remained unchanged from 1913 to 1922.
Having successfully
disregarded the Constitutional requirement to reapportion the House, Congress
then put our government on the path to oligarchy by passing the “Permanent
Apportionment Act of 1929” which established that, henceforth, the size of the
House would be permanently fixed at “the then existing number of
Representatives”. The “then existing number” being a verbose and inconspicuous
way to specify 435. (This act also specified the mathematical method to be used
in apportioning that fixed number of seats based upon the decennial Census
results.)
So, what is the number? How many representatives do we
need to truly reflect the will of the citizens? It would take about 5000 - 6000 representatives to return the
district size to 50-60 thousand citizens. Still a bit large. But manageable. Interestingly this is about the number of Bishops
in The Catholic Church, another large governmental organization. They seem to manage
it… but I digress.
So, increasing the size of congress will cost a lot of
money, right? Well not really when you consider that their wage is not bulk of
the expense. The base pay is only 174000.
What really costs the taxpayer money is the added
allowances for staff and expenses. They average 1.6 million per member. For all
of congress, that’s a whopping 954 million dollars, nearly a billion, because
some positions pay more salary, like speaker of the house and senate majority
leader,
These hidden expenses could be easily contained without
touching the Salaries. The problem is that the size of the support staff has
been allowed to expand without realistic limits. In 1930 there were about 830
employees working for the House of representatives. (Not counting Senate staff,
but that is another issue) Roughly 2 per representative. This number increased
with time to a whopping 7920 in 1986. It has come down a bit but still sits
around. 7330 (2010). So, this begs the question… if 830 house employees took
care of 435 representatives in 1930, (without today’s technology) why does it
take 7330 employees, (17 per rep) to take care of the same 435 seats today? It
is because the representatives are delegating a lot of work that used to be
their responsibility, like reading the bills before voting on them. Also in
checking into this it seems more and more positions that have been added that
are not directly associated with function of the representative. So, how big
does the House need to be to truly represent the voters?
Ever since 1913, your direct representation has been
being diluted due to the failure of congress to do its job. This was codified
in 1922 and has remained the status quo since. In 1913 the population was 97 million,
that’s 223,000 citizens per representative. By 1913 we were already getting
outside the original vision of 50 - 60 thousand citizens per representative. Today’s
population is 325,000,000 which is one rep per 747,000,000 citizens. That’s less than one third the representation that
an individual had just about 100 years ago. The population has more than
tripled, while the number of representatives has remained stagnate.
I like the idea set forth in the Constitution; a
maximum of one rep per 30,000. You would think states would be fighting to get
as many representatives in the house as possible. If that were so, the House would
be 10833 representatives. … Ok that’s probably not ever going to happen again!
Using the 1/50,000 or 1/ 60,000 model, I think a house
of 5000 – 6000 is manageable. A sudden change like increasing from 435 to 6,000
would likely be a major disruption to system. I think that increasing the size
of the House is what we should be working towards.
To start, increasing congress to 1000 would more than
double your current representation. Increasing to 1000 would infuse new blood
into the system. It would dilute the power of long term incumbents by 56%
instantly. Then every election cycle, another 500 - 1000 members should be
added until we return to the 1/ 50,000 ratio of representatives to citizens. I welcome your thoughts on this.
(Edited: 2/22/19) Another option I have considered is turning the hands of the clock back to that fateful day the congress failed to do its job and locked the number of reps at 435. 1929, That would put the house at about 1500 reps. I think that is pretty manageable, especially with the connectivity available to us today. It would be a good starting place anyway. Maybe fixing the ratio of reps to citizens is a better way to go? (End of Edit)
(Edited: 2/22/19) Another option I have considered is turning the hands of the clock back to that fateful day the congress failed to do its job and locked the number of reps at 435. 1929, That would put the house at about 1500 reps. I think that is pretty manageable, especially with the connectivity available to us today. It would be a good starting place anyway. Maybe fixing the ratio of reps to citizens is a better way to go? (End of Edit)
(Edited: 8/31/19) THE WYOMING RULE:
In further researching the term limits debate, I became aware of an interesting concept about 4 months ago called the Wyoming Rule. The more I read about it the more I liked it. It is a very good common sense method to redistrict more fairly, based on population. The Constitution guarantees, a minimum of 1 House Representative to each State, regardless of population. Currently, the least populated State is Wyoming with 572,381 citizens. They have one representative in Congress, so their entire State is One Congressional District. Here's where the problem begins. The Average District is about 750,000 with some as high as 800,000. which means citizens of States with less than 750,000 citizens are technically over represented in the House. Wyoming's House Rep, has 1.4 times more representational power than the Rep from a 800,000 citizen district. Does that seem Fair to you???
So, what if you take that population number of the least populated State and divide it into the populations of each of the other state to determine the number of districts for that State. Example: Vermont, the next least populated state at 627,180 would get 1.1 Rep. So they remain with one district state. Alaska (next least populated) at 735,720 would get 1.29 reps, so remain with 1 district . North Dakota also stays at 1. but South Dakota with 892,631 would get 1.56 reps so it rounds up to 2 districts. And every other State would also see an increase in representatives. At the Current (2010 Census) populations, the House of Representatives would have 547 Representative. A very doable number and districts would have a smaller standard deviation of population disparity. Perhaps the Wyoming Rule could restore the intent of the founders to give fair and equal representation to all individuals.
The Wyoming rule would accomplish some of the goals of expanding the House to better represent the citizens right to direct representation, but not much in the way of getting Reps closer to their constituents. (End Edit)
So, what if you take that population number of the least populated State and divide it into the populations of each of the other state to determine the number of districts for that State. Example: Vermont, the next least populated state at 627,180 would get 1.1 Rep. So they remain with one district state. Alaska (next least populated) at 735,720 would get 1.29 reps, so remain with 1 district . North Dakota also stays at 1. but South Dakota with 892,631 would get 1.56 reps so it rounds up to 2 districts. And every other State would also see an increase in representatives. At the Current (2010 Census) populations, the House of Representatives would have 547 Representative. A very doable number and districts would have a smaller standard deviation of population disparity. Perhaps the Wyoming Rule could restore the intent of the founders to give fair and equal representation to all individuals.
The Wyoming rule would accomplish some of the goals of expanding the House to better represent the citizens right to direct representation, but not much in the way of getting Reps closer to their constituents. (End Edit)
The 1500 rep alternative to term limits returns the power of
the House to the citizens in the way the founders intended. It dilutes the
power of each representative, which term limits does not. It puts the representative
back in touch with their constituents , which term limits does not. And finally
returns accountability to the position by requiring the representative to
reside within his own district. These goals of diluting the concentration of
power, infusing new blood, and returning accountability cannot be attained by
taking away the rights of others to select their own representation, as would
be the result of term limits. … and we all know this… don’t we?
One last thought and this would require a constitutional amendment, unlike what I have previously proposed, which would not. Texas, as well as many other states, requires that State representatives reside inside the district that they represent. The US constitution only requires residency in the state which the representative’s district is in. When districts and states were small this was not an issue. Today however, this means your representative could live on the other side of the state completely disconnected from the citizens he is representing. In Texas, an El Paso resident could represent a district in east Texas without ever visiting there. Requiring representatives to reside in their district puts them in touch with the real wants and needs of the community.
References:
US Constitution.
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