Taxation With Representation Is Not So Good Either

Taxation without representation was the outcry that rallied our nation into rebellion.  With good reason the people of the colonies were outraged.  King George and the Parliament were unresponsive to the needs of the colonists and viewed them as nothing more than a source of revenue.  As noble as our forefather’s intentions were when we formed this great nation, we have drifted so far afield that it is hard to distinguish our form of government from King George’s government from which we rebelled.  Our representative in Congress – the so called “elected officials” – have spent the last century consolidating their power and weakening the effectiveness of our representation.  Today, most if not all the Senators and Representatives are beholden not to the people who elected them, but to the special interests and lobbyists who finance their campaigns.  More importantly, and this is the root of the problem, our representation to the federal government is diluted every year.

 To understand the problem we need to look at the founders’ vision of what a representative democracy would look like.  What better place to look than the Constitution itself.  Article I, Section 2 provides, in relevant part:

 The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative

 Read that again.  One representative for every 30,000 inhabitants.  The average size of today’s Congressional district is about 650,000, and the size ranges from a low of 495,000 to a high of over 900,000.  So much for one person, one vote!  The Founding Fathers envisioned that the number of representatives would increase every year in proportion to the population.  While 30,000 may be too small a number (which would result in a Congress of over 10,000 representatives), there is no question that 435 representatives – a number fixed by Congress in 1911, is wholly inadequate to provide effective and responsive representation today.  Interestingly, the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) originally had 12 articles, the first of which gradually increased the size of the House of Representatives to one representative to not more than 50,000 persons.  The framers of the Constitution recognized that the size of the House should increase with the population.  In fact, until Congress usurped the power from the people and fixed the number of representatives, the size of congress increased every 10 years.  By 1911, there was approximately 1 representative for every 175,000 people.   

 There are many reasons for fixing (not apportioning) the number of representatives based on population.  One of the most important is to enable the citizens to have themselves represented by someone who is responsive to their interests.  While there would be many more members of congress, the primary result would be representatives that are more responsive to their population.  Lobbyists and special interests would have a much more difficult time influencing legislation.  Campaigns would be more democratic, as it would lower the entry barriers to running for office.  It is much easier (less costly and less time consuming) to campaign for the votes for 50,000 than it is to campaign for the votes of 700,000.  There would almost assuredly be a less homogeneous view of opinions, and perhaps more than just 2 political parties.  A more diversified representative population would likely result in more consideration put into spending bills.  It is easy to tax the masses who you don’t know, but difficult to escape scrutiny if the number of people you represent is only the size of a couple towns that you live in. 

 Ineffective representation results in an unresponsive government that taxes its citizens.  There are many benefits to increasing the size of the House (which decreases the representative to population ratio and increases the individual influence), but not all can be addressed at this time in this blog post, so I will leave now and raise other topics later.  (Some of the other topics that can help regain power to the people relate to the method of taxation (repeal the Federal income tax and other direct taxes, and make the US Government tax the states in proportion to the population; Repeal the 16^th amendment and require that Senators be appointed by the State Legislatures; explicitly repeal the power of the Federal Reserve to appropriate funds without specific congressional approval.)  Just imagine a government that does not engage in wasteful spending that only benefits one powerful politician's district, or where taxation and appropriation are truly debated.  It is a lot harder to convince 6000 people to pull the wool over America's eyes than it is 435!