• When the Constitution was ratified, when the population of the country was a few million, the Congress had under 100 members and not more than a couple hundred employees.
  • Today, the country is much bigger, the population is a few hundred million, and the Congress has grown, too:
  • So what's the problem?
    The country is hundreds of times bigger, and so is the Congress.
  • The problem is that most of those 25,000 people, who wield all this enormous power, are NOT elected.
    (And many of those unelected staffers actually have more power than the newly-elected members!)

  • Meanwhile, the districts have grown so huge, that they are actually larger in population than most of the states once were.

  • The power of Congress has grown, but so has the concentration of power.
  • So has the patronage.
  • And so has the power of the party establishments, because the districts are so large that only a party can afford the campaign costs.
  • And the two big parties make deals with each other, to cut costs and to increase their power: How can anybody use the word "representative" to refer to such an institution?
  • An how can it be called a "democratic" system, when only 1-2% of the 25,000 people who run the Congress (and wield its enormous power)
    are directly elected by the people?

    The rest are appointed. Many of them are enormously powerful, and they are answerable only to the party establichment and/or to the person elected in the huge district back home (even tho many of them really live in the DC area).


    But what does the Bill of Rights say about this?
    The BoR, as passed by Congress in 1791, included a remedy -- an Amdt that can still be ratified, which said that: (Contest... exact # -- look it up!)
    That would make a CD about the size of one of the districts now being set up for the Brookhaven Town Council.
  • That would also make about 1/4 of the people in Congress elected, rather than appointed!

  • (assuming ~25K) (or slightly larger if the new members are additions instead of replacements).

  • It would NOT mean that the Congress would have to become any larger!
    With smaller districts, there is no need to have as many staff memebrs.
    There is no need for each Rep to have a huge suite of offices, with sep receptionists and secretaries.

    And there is no reason why much of the decision making, the investigating, the law writing, etc. now done by unelected appiontees
    couldn't be taken over by people ELECTED directly by the people.

    Not qualified, you say?
    Well, how about electing QUALIFIED people,
    and letting THEM run the Congress?!