WHEREAS, Our Nation’s founding battle cry was “No Taxation without Representation.”
WHEREAS, Today, our individual citizens are federally taxed on their income, yet have no way to effectively communicate with federal representatives about how they should be taxed, or how their tax dollars should be spent.
WHEREAS, Our Nation’s founders intended the House of Representatives to be the chamber closest to the American people: “the People’s House”.
WHEREAS, the founding debate of the ratio of representation in the House was amongst the most voluminous in the Constitutional debates, and although various ratios (from 1/30,000 to 1/50,000) were proposed, a hard cap was never considered by the framers to be prudent.
WHEREAS, The first proposed amendment to our Bill of Rights would have fixed a ratio of representation in the House, but a last minute conference amendment between the House and Senate versions of the Amendment created a mathematical impossibility such that there would be no representatives between 8,000,000 and 10,000,000 constituents, and thus the Amendment did not pass and remains unratified.
WHEREAS, George Washington only spoke once during the Constitutional debates, in support of a smaller ratio, and in support of the idea that our speech only matters if we can use said speech to get good representation.
WHEREAS, Despite the foregoing historical facts, and the clear intent of our founders, the number of Representatives in Congress has been capped at 435 since 1911 when the U.S. population was 92,228,531 (1910 U.S. Census), and was codified in the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act.
WHEREAS, The U.S. population has grown to more than three times that size to 331,449,281 in 2020 (2020 U.S. Census), and women have been enfranchised to vote, while the size of the House has remained capped at 435.
WHEREAS, When the cap on the size of the House was statutorily set in 1929, the average Member of the House represented approximately 280,000 people, compared to approximately 774,000 people in 2024.
WHEREAS, Since the cap was statutorily set, Congress has continually delegated it’s authority to a growing alphabet soup of Executive agencies, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ratified this delegation of authority in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 468 U.S. 837 (1984).
WHEREAS, The Federal Executive and Judicial bureaucrats now number in the millions, a size that 435 representatives, even with staff, cannot reasonably oversee, or claw back the powers previously delegated. If we rely on Congressional staff, 18 year old bureaucrats run our country.
WHEREAS, Each Member of the House represents far more people on average than legislators in nearly all developed and developing democratic republics, and is an outlier among other member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with nearly 3 times the citizen to representative ratio as Japan, the country with next largest district size.
WHEREAS, Representatives who serve fewer people are more likely to have contact with their constituents, receive higher marks for their constituent service, better reflect the views of their districts, and be less corrupt.
WHEREAS, the American Enterprise Institute has conducted studies which confirm neither political party, but the people, benefit from removing the cap on the House of Representatives.
WHEREAS, the apportionment of the House and the electoral college are based on a Census that counts both citizens and non-citizens without distinction.
BE IT RESOLVED, The Republicans of Wyoming to support, and request the Republican National Committee, President Donald J. Trump, and all Republican Congressmen, especially our own, to support repealing and replacing the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act. A sample bill for consideration in the U.S. House (or Senate) is enclosed. (The bill is a mere starting point for a serious debate to be introduced by the Speaker of the House about the right way to remove the 435 cap and incrementally grow the House – or explosively grow it. The debate is not whether we should uncap the House, but to what degree, and how. For the sake of former President Trump and Wyoming, what ratio of citizens to a member of the House is appropriate to empower and empower our House to counterbalance the power of the Executive and Judiciary?)
Passed:
Wyoming Republican Party, 19 Apr 2024 WYGOP State Convention
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