Every time I write a bit on Congress, I go back to thinking about Representation. I am rethinking my original idea on making it 1 representative for every 100,000 citizens. The Constitution sets a lower limit of 30,000 per representative but it doesn’t set an upper limit. Evidently, 100 years ago Congress fixed the House of Representatives at 435 because they ran out of room in their chamber. This leads to one representative for over 700,000 citizens, on average, with Montana having one representative for over 950,000, today.

While 1/100K is a reasonable number – I think it give the citizens of each district a better chance to meet and know their representative and to share their views with them – I am willing to work with other numbers. 210,000 is about as high as I would like to go.  Close to what the level was when congress fixed the number of Representatives. People still have an opportunity to know their rep. Montana would have 5 representatives (OK there is a down side to most ideas). We would be closer to a representative democracy, closer than the country has been in a hundred years.

Of course, if We the People don’t do our job, nothing much will change in Washington.

I would like to suggest that we just restrict anyone from serving more than 6 consecutive years in Congress and they must sit out one congress (2 years) before returning.

I know that one of the biggest complaints against term limits is the loss of experience and knowledge that is gained by time in the job, but if the Congressmen return after the next general election, then they are bringing back their experience and knowledge and it can grow if they can continue to beat all the young challengers that crop up during their hiatus.