After I wrote this”status interview“On Tuesday I heard from a TPM Reader AP who said, by general agreement, that he would either add to the list or replace DC/PR statehood with House expansion. I just see now that I haven't had a chance to respond to the AP yet (I thought I had). But my response should have been that I basically agree. And as I suggested in the original article, even though it was presented as a checklist of five questions/agenda items, everything after the first two (the filibuster and Supreme Court reform) could be reclassified as “the super important things that really need to be done.” And many more could be added to this list. Going back to the original concept, the idea behind this list was not that it would be exhaustive, but that it would be a good list for determining who is serious and who is not, who is worth supporting, and who needs to go.
But this potential addition gives me the opportunity to expand on what the future era of reform will have to achieve, because the House of Representatives is a good example of a number of key trends that have led us to this point. The number of representatives was limited to 435 members in 1929, when the US population was approximately 122 million. This is approximately a third of the current population. On average, just over 750,000 of the million people now live in residential counties. That's a lot of people. This figure was recorded when just over 250,000 of the million people lived in House districts. Now it's 750,000. That's a huge difference, and it's important because the House of Representatives is supposed to be the body closest to the people.
