| Congress is dysfunctional. So let's … add to it? Counterintuitive as that may seem, Post columnist Danielle Allen says: Yes, a bigger House of Representatives is part of the cure for what ails us. Maybe even the most important part. Allen, a nationally renowned scholar and political theorist, is using her column this year to examine what she calls our "Great Pulling Apart" — the troubling forces, so familiar to all of us, that are straining the bonds of our politics and society. The project involves both diagnosis and prescription, and in arguing that more House seats would be good medicine Allen has august company: the founders themselves. "As originally conceived," Allen writes, "the House was supposed to grow with every decennial census. James Madison even included in the Bill of Rights an amendment laying out a formula forcing the House to grow from 65 to 200 members, then allowing it to expand beyond that." In the first half of the 20th century, however, the House got stuck at 435 members. Consequently, district sizes ballooned far beyond what the framers envisioned, and a key part of the their design was lost. But not forever. There are bills in Congress to add seats and shrink those districts back down to size. If we're serious about repairing our democracy, Allen says, we need to take them seriously.  (Brian Stauffer for The Washington Post) The framers never wanted members to represent such large districts — and with good reason. By Danielle Allen ● Read more » | | | | The high-profile defamation suit against the network won't turn on testimony like that cited from the media mogul this week. By Erik Wemple ● Read more » | | | | Red states need workers. Here's how the president can supply them — and marginalize MAGA in the process. By Greg Sargent ● Read more » | | | An administration official warns about a "red line." The world remembers how that went with Obama and Syria's use of chemical weapons. By Jim Geraghty ● Read more » | | | | 
Email
No comments:
Post a Comment