SECTION IV: WHY INCREASE THE
HOUSE TO 1,305 MEMBERS
The single most important reason to size up to 1,305 Representatives is to make up for the last 100 years of no increases, and to protect the future as it likely won't be adjusted for another 30-50 years
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Until 1913 Congress increased the size of the House with ‘every subsequent Term of ten Year’ (census), as is recommended by the U.S. Constitution. The House size was set at 435 in 1911 after the 1910 census, and was frozen at 435 members by the bipartisan (D’s & R’s) Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. My opinion is both parties realized that by capping the House at 435 it would become more difficult for a 3rd party to be formed to compete with the Donkeys and Elephants. We are now experiencing the fruits of their labor and our country’s partisan divide is a direct, and predictable outcome of it.
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Have you heard anyone in either party talk about increasing the size of the House? How about the mainstream, upstream, downstream, livestream, and no stream media? Neither party has a willingness to even discuss this subject, let alone embrace it. And the result is our total frustration with the hypocrisy of leaders on both sides and their lack of accountability to The People.
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Republican Senators are complaining that Democrats stalled the process of approving Trump appointments. Under Biden the Democrats complained about Republican stall tactics, and under Obama the same. Don’t they see how ridiculous they are to The People? Both sides try to screw over the other and then complain about it like it’s something new. Meanwhile, We The People are the ones that actually get screwed.
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Project 1305 proposes to increase the size of the House of Representatives by 3X — with 870 new Districts and new Representatives. Say What!?
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One of the first persons I shared this with responded, ‘What, and have even greater dysfunction?’ and ‘What about the cost?’ Sure, I get it. It’ll just be harder to get things done and will cost us so much more. To that I say ‘BS’.
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In regard to getting things done, I certainly don’t believe it would be any worse than our current dysfunction with the far left and right wings of the two parties running our Country. America’s population was 92 million in 1910, and it’s 340 million people in 2024. On average, we now have 1 Representative for every 760,000 people. In Montana, they have just 1 Representative for their population of 1,137,233 people, and South Dakota has just 1 with a population of 924,000 people.
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How can any single Representative possibly provide proper Governance?
The House needs to modernize and the argument of ‘where would they meet’ is a non-starter. There is plenty of room in the current Capitol Building to renovate the House Chamber to accommodate 1,305 members to meet and vote. They may not all have offices in the Capitol Building but that should not prevent the People from having appropriate representation. Plus, during those sessions they won’t have the gallery of cheerleaders. Those seats will be taken by Representatives. They won't have as much room to spread out, and may even be forced to ‘sit with the enemy’ versus on opposite sides. Sorry, the People are supposed to come first.
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But what about the huge cost? My response is just look at the cost of not gaining the level of oversight we citizens need! Currently, between wages, benefits, the cost of staff in D.C. and in district, along with cost of building maintenance, the Capitol Police, etc., each House member costs about $4.4 million per year. Adding 870 new Representatives would add close to $4 Billion per year.
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The General Accounting Office identified up to $500 Billion dollars of waste or fraud in America’s annual expenditures. So let’s see, a $4 Billion dollars investment to get back $500 Billion? There’s not a hedge fund manager around that wouldn’t take that bet.
Just look at the cost overruns in our Department of Defense. Per President Tump, America’s newest aircraft carrier wasn’t just over budget — it was gloriously over budget.
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As quoted in Business Insider, “Look at the Gerald Ford, the aircraft carrier,” Trump said. “It was supposed to cost $3 billion. It ends up costing like $18 billion.”
In addition, consider the B-1 Bombers, or the U.S. Navy’s Columbia-class submarine program, or Abrams tanks —which are all armaments over budget due to lack of Proper Representation in the House, resulting in non-effective Oversight by the House. Don’t get me wrong about our military spending. We need a strong military, but our single largest budget expense needs sufficient oversight.
Our lobbyists and defense contractors certainly have a lot of oversight. Apparently, not so much for our Generals that have signed off on the invoices the last 25–30 years. Lobbying has continued its upward spiral to set a new spending record in 2024 — $4.4 Billion! Per this article by Open Secrets, “The most common issue addressed by lobbyists was federal spending, with lobbying pushing for increased appropriations, following a recent trend.”
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Companies don’t continue to invest in something unless it pays off. With over 12,000 lobbyists hounding our 435 Representatives, WE are outnumbered by 27 lobbyists for each House member. 27–1 are not good odds for our side.
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This graph from Satistica shows where the lobbyists focus their, and their clients’ attention:
Check out #1 on the list! Of course it’s the largest target.​​​
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WE simply aren’t represented at the table anymore. We elect our Representatives to make sure our
hard-earned tax dollars are spent wisely. Well, there hasn't been anyone watching over the
chicken coop anymore for a long time. ​​​​
There are various groups that are already committed to the cause of increasing the size of the House, but none propose such a drastic increase. Generally, political scientists propose two ways to determine the appropriate size of the House. They use The Wyoming Rule, and the Cube Root rule. Using the Wyoming Rule the House would be increased to 580 seats, while the Cube Root Rule would increase it to about 590 seats.
Adding just 160 members won’t change the system. Even at 590 seats the impact of Billionaire and Multi-Millionaire donors, dark money PAC’s and, special interest groups to still influence ‘local’ elections for House seats would be only slightly reduced. Plus, the Wyoming and Cube Root Rules are not based on any scientific formulae but are nothing more than arbitrary approaches.
I’m of the opinion that the number should not be based on political scientists’ and experts’ advice. Just base it on my common sense. My point is that it is very evident that 435 members that have to fund raise all the time, and campaign for election every 2 years simply isn’t working. They just don’t have enough time in a day to oversee our interests.
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Our interests are really controlled by our Representatives’ staff that does the research and recommendations, as the people we have elected simply don’t have the time to read the actual legislation they are voting on. So, they definitely don’t have time for oversight.
Simply adding 150 members, or even doubling the size won’t make enough of an impact to have proper citizen oversight of our federal government or limit the influence of outside money flowing into a district. It's the key reason we need to triple the size to 1305.
An important reason for 1305 is the competitive desire Americans have for a goal line to cross over. Simply 'increase the size of the House' doesn't give a defined goal. It's mushy. It's an unknown, moving target. It's a 'maybe goal'
1,305 - That's a goal! If I support it I know what I'm voting for. It's definitive.
By tripling the size of the House, it immediately makes it possible for ‘average Americans’ to run for office. While it wouldn’t eliminate Gerrymandering districts, it would make it more difficult to do so. House members need to be responsive to their community and can’t even begin to be effective when serving 760,00 people. Even at serving 257,471 people it’s a task, but much more doable than our current situation.
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PROJECT 1305 is about bringing proper Oversight & Accountability to Our house. In 1995, the House Oversight & Accountability Committee was changed from having 14 subcommittees to 7, which resulted in a staff reduction of 50%. In 2007 the subcommittees were further reduced to 5. Currently there are 45 House members on the Committee. It needs to be 400!
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The Department of Defense has never been audited! They get a get-out-of-jail-free card ‘exemption from audit’ resolution every year. This is in direct violation of our Representatives’ oath to the Constitution which in Article I, Section 9.2.7 states:
"No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time an accounting of expenditures…".
Modern ‘time to time’ would be considered as an annual report, and a ‘regular Statement and Account’ would mean via an audit. Have you ever read a story on a $500 toilet seat, or $300 wrench? How can our Congress fulfill their oath to the Constitution if the largest area of expenditure is the Department of Defense and it can pass an audit?
However, it’s not just the Department of Defense that needs OUR oversight, all departments do. The GAO (U. S. Government Accountability Office) is an independent government agency tasked with serving Congress and is described on its website as:
‘GAO, often called the "congressional watchdog,” is an independent, non-partisan agency that works for Congress. GAO examines how taxpayer dollars are spent and provides Congress and federal agencies with objective, non-partisan, fact-based information to help the government save money and work more efficiently.’
The GAO issued its updated High Risk List in April 2023 and makes specific recommendations to Congress for addressing those risks. The list highlights 37 areas across the federal government departments and agencies that are vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, or that need broad reform.
In looking at just the DOD risk there are instances where no or little improvement has been made. My question is what does Congress do with the report once it’s published? Just being able to actually oversee the departments as Representatives are supposed to will likely pay for their new jobs – and then some!
This is a link to the GAO full report:
https://files.gao.gov/reports/GAO-23-106203/index.html
For the Department of Defense:
Weapon Systems Acquisition – as of 2021 represents $1.9 Trillion
Per the report:
‘Since our 2021 High-Risk Report, our assessment of DOD’s performance against our five criteria remains unchanged. For this report, we divided the overall high-risk area into four segments—acquisition policy and oversight, software and cybersecurity, defense industrial base, and innovation investments—that reflect key areas of risk for DOD weapon systems acquisition. Since these are new segments, we will not rate DOD on them separately until our next High-Risk Report in 2025.’
Financial Management – has been on the High-Risk List since 1995
Per the report: “DOD financial management has been on our High-Risk List since 1995. DOD’s spending makes up about half of the federal government’s discretionary spending. Its physical assets comprise almost 68 percent of the federal government’s physical assets. DOD has not yet received an audit opinion on its annual department-wide financial statements. It has been unable to accurately account for and report on its spending or physical assets.
DOD’s financial management issues extend beyond financial reporting as long-standing control deficiencies adversely affect the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of its operations. Sound financial management practices and reliable, useful, timely financial and performance information would help improve DOD’s accountability over its extensive resources and would support more efficient management of these resources.’
Business Systems Modernization-
Per the report: ‘DOD spends billions of dollars each year to acquire and modernize business systems, including ones that address key areas such as personnel, financial management, health care, and logistics. However, significant challenges impede DOD’s efforts to improve this systems environment. This high-risk area comprises three segments that address critical challenges facing DOD: (1) improving business systems acquisition management, (2) improving business systems investment management, and (3) leveraging DOD’s federated business enterprise architecture. Addressing these three critical areas could assist DOD to achieve better cost, schedule, and performance outcomes; manage its portfolio of business system investments more effectively and efficiently; and help identify and address potential duplication and overlap.’
Here is an example of the lack of real accountability to the Congress due to poor oversight.​​​​​​​​​​
Out of 25 programs required to report their data, only 6 did so
Approach to Business Transformation
Per the report: ‘DOD spends billions of dollars each year to maintain key business operations intended to support the warfighter. This includes systems and processes related to the management of contracts, finances, the supply chain, support infrastructure, and weapon systems acquisition. Weaknesses in these areas adversely affect DOD’s efficiency and effectiveness. They also render its operations vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse. DOD’s approach to transforming these business operations is linked to its ability to perform its overall mission. This, in turn, affects the readiness and capabilities of U.S. military forces.
We added DOD’s overall approach to managing business transformation as a high-risk area because DOD had not taken the necessary steps to achieve and sustain business reform on a broad, strategic, department-wide, and integrated basis. In addition, it did not initially have an integrated plan for business transformation improvements.’
Sample of Non-DOD High Risks
Ensuring the Cybersecurity of the Nation
Per the report: ‘We have designated information security as a government-wide high-risk area since 1997. We expanded this high-risk area in 2003 to include protection of critical cyber infrastructure. In 2015, we expanded it again to include protecting the privacy of personally identifiable information.
The rating for Leadership Commitment increased from partially met to met as a result of Congress establishing the Office of the National Cyber Director in the White House to lead the nation’s cybersecurity effort. The remaining four criteria ratings remain unchanged since 2021. Although federal agencies have made some improvements, continued issues challenge the federal government’s efforts to ensure the cybersecurity of the nation, including the urgent need for
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a fully established and implemented comprehensive cybersecurity strategy and plans
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more concentrated efforts to determine whether the 16 critical infrastructure sector owners and operators have adopted a cybersecurity framework
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more complete efforts to fully develop privacy programs (e.g., establish policies and procedures for cross-agency activities such as workforce planning and managing privacy risks to IT systems) and
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improved cybersecurity workforce management activities (e.g., a plan that addresses workforce shortages).’
Improving Federal Oversight of Food Safety:
Per the report: ‘The safety and quality of the U.S. food supply, both domestic and imported, are governed by at least 30 federal laws that are collectively administered by 15 federal agencies. We have long reported on the fragmented nature of the federal food safety oversight system. This fragmentation has caused inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, and inefficient use of resources. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) both have responsibilities related to infant formula. FDA oversees the product’s safety. USDA provides supplemental foods, including formula, to low-income families through its Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. We have started work examining purchases of infant formula through this program. In recent years, we have recommended congressional and executive actions that, if implemented, would help reduce fragmentation and improve federal oversight of food safety.’
Veterans Administration Acquisition Management
Per the report: ‘VA has among the highest obligations and number of contract actions in the federal government. Over the past 10 years, VA’s total contract obligations increased substantially, rising 147 percent. In fiscal year 2022, VA obligated about $56 billion for goods and services.
Our work continues to identify VA acquisition management challenges including: (1) developing adequate strategies and policies, (2) managing its supply chain, (3) managing its acquisition workforce, (4) improving its information technology and data systems, and (5) providing consistent leadership and execution of management priorities. VA made some progress addressing these issues. However, a number of substantial challenges remain. Given VA’s significant contract obligations and the acquisitions-related challenges it faces, we added VA acquisition management to our High-Risk List in 2019.’
These are just some of the High-Risk areas that haven’t sufficiently been addressed by our Congress. How can we expect 435 Representatives that have to fund raise much of the time and run a campaign every other year be effective on managing our tax dollars?