Within weeks of allegations that his wife engaged in insider trading when she acquired $15,000 worth of Amgen stock, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) has introduced legislation to expand the number of Congressmen and women in D.C.
The Restoring Equal and Accountable Legislators in the House (REAL House) Act aims to increase the number of representatives and increase their “diversity,” as well as the diversity of the Electoral College because Blumenauer thinks that congressional districts are too large.
“The number of constituents living in a single congressional district has dramatically increased since the number of House members was arbitrarily capped in 1929,” Blumenauer said. “Current district sizes threaten the direct constituent connection on which the House was founded.”
Currently, there are 435 voting members of the House of Representatives, a cap from when the U.S. population was only 122 million people.
“The REAL House Act will help our government better reflect our districts and constituents’ needs,” Blumenauer said in a statement online. “To restore the House’s direct link to the public and to foster greater diversity among members and the Electoral College, we must increase the number of representatives.”
The proposal did not outline how much it would cost to increase the size of the U.S. government by his suggested 149 seats.
Since 1929, Blumenauer argues the U.S. population has more than doubled to 328 million people and, as a result, the size of congressional districts has nearly tripled while the number of representatives has remained stagnant.
“The average congressional district now includes 800,000 constituents. If Congress fails to act, by 2050, each member of Congress is on track to represent more than one million people,” he said.
In December 2022, the Democratic National Committee approved a move to remove Iowa as the first state on the party’s presidential nominating calendar—as has been tradition since 1972.
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