Continuing the Fight for Fewer State Reps
Today’s Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal has an op-ed about the size of Missouri’s House of Representatives. In short, the House is too big and we could do just fine with fewer elected state reps. It is a very good editorial and sounds many of the same arguments I’ve made in my writings on this subject. I recommend the piece highly — thanks to Combest for catching it. The key argument:
The annual savings on pay and per diem of $39,751 per House member, multiplied by 95, tops $3.75 million per year.
That money adds up. Decreasing the number of people who have a say in how we live our lives would be another benefit of reducing the size of the House.
That’s a great article. It seems more than appropriate to cut down the representatives, even if it is only to a 3:1 ratio. That’s a huge expenditure as it is.
Comment by Caitlin Hartsell — March 23, 2010 @ 1:42 p.m.
You don’t necessarily want to have fewer people with a say in how we run our lives. I’d rather have a large legislature over me than one person–a legislature isn’t unified and represents varied interests, which makes it hard for it to become completely tyrannical.
Furthermore, all else being equal, I think more representatives are better than fewer. To take an extreme example, if a representative has over 600,000 constituents (a situation we find in the U.S. House of Representatives), in what sense can they be said to truly represent any of them? I’m not sure exactly where that line is or if this proposal would push the Missouri House across it, but it is something to be mindful of.
Comment by John Payne — March 23, 2010 @ 2:19 p.m.
Yes, I absolutely want to have fewer people with a say in how I run my life, just like Billy Joel sang it. If a legislature were to strictly follow the constitution that established it, it would not really matter if there was 1,000 or ten members. It would only do what it was authorized to do. The more officials you have exerting power, the more people you have attempting to expand that power, and the authority of the legislature grows.
In political reality, larger, more cumbersome legislatures become dominated by leadership. Many factors can influence this other than just the number of legislators (time in session, staff size, rules they operate under), but the idea that bad ideas will die in a large legislature because of so many voices in erroneous. (For example, this past Sunday to give a particularly horrible example). You can greatly expand the size of the US House, and by doing so get a few more Ron Pauls, but all you really succeed at doing is losing more votes 1302 to 3 instead of 434 to 1.
For better or worse, one person with the fillibuster in a very small legislature can block a lot of legislation. To that end, rules play a very important role in these issues. But there is substantial evidence that the larger the legislature, the higher the spending levels.
Comment by David Stokes — March 23, 2010 @ 2:36 p.m.