The apportionment act of 1911 was the last time the number of seats in congress was expanded. At that time, the population of the US was estimated to be around 93 million. Since then the ratio of house member to US citizen has effectively tripled.
That has also resulted in lobbyist control increasing, as well as minimizing third party candidates that could campaign and win in local areas. The biggest issue with re-apportioning congress size to deal with the lobbyist issue is that it upsets the power of states’ representation in regards to the election of president.
As such, I suggest that we triple the size of both the senate and the house to decentralize power away from lobbying. Making it incredibly hard for corruption to be spread even with large buckets of cash. The cost to get legislation that is America Last passed would be dramatically multiplied.
Discuss below:
The apportionment act of 1911 was the last time the number of seats in congress was expanded. At that time, the population of the US was estimated to be around 93 million. Since then the ratio of house member to US citizen has effectively tripled.
That has also resulted in lobbyist control increasing, as well as minimizing third party candidates that could campaign and win in local areas. The biggest issue with re-apportioning congress size to deal with the lobbyist issue is that it upsets the power of states’ representation in regards to the election of president.
As such, I suggest that we triple the size of both the senate and the house to decentralize power away from lobbying. Making it incredibly hard for corruption to be spread even with large buckets of cash. The cost to get legislation that is America Last passed would be dramatically multiplied.
Discuss below:
Why not just outlaw lobbying? And lobbyists? And payoffs to buy favor?
The issue is that banning lobbying in general is a 1st amendment type of issue.
So let’s ban specific lobbyist behaviors like having the lobbyist not be able to donate to the candidates private charities or foundations for helping people that pay them off as board people. That wouldn’t cause any issues at all and be hard to determine if it is against campaign finance law.
Bribes are already illegal, but bribes through random accounts, favors, and webs of obfuscation is really hard to track down and stop without stepping on the toes of legitimately good and moral operations.
Therefore, the suggestion of devaluing the effects of lobbying by requiring more people to be bought is effective at discouraging lobbying, while also not imposing hard to enforce stuff.
This suggestion combined with term limits... makes lobbying a lot more expensive and makes politicians forced to act genuinely.