Well put. I agree they are leeches. I for sure believe they should have their salary cut in half--maybe into a third of what it is now. In AZ, the state legislators make 20k/yr. It forces them to keep a real job.

I am assuming that they will typically be of poor quality. I figure the more poor quality reps we have, the less likely it is that they can get anything done. That should be the goal in my opinion.

I guess I don't understand the 435 limitation--seems arbitrary. The purpose of the House is to represent the people's interests--the House does not do this right now. The people in each districts are too diverse for their reps to take strong stances on issues important to parts of their constituents. I think having a smaller house proportionally will cause more voices to go unheard than would otherwise be necessary. I'd rather have a chaotic House that gets nothing done than a House that can be organized easily by special interests. I'd be interested to research why the 435 limitation was proposed and passed and by who.

I agree in part. I think term limits could be good--not totally sure though. However, I don't think having a small house is a good idea; we already have a small Senate. The House represents the people. The people are extremely diverse. Accordingly, there should be enough reps to the House to represent the diverse cultures of the districts that make up each State. Having a small House would also make it very easy for special interests and lobbyists to buy representatives.
If you look at senators who used to be representatives, most have watered-down positions on issues now because they are trying to get elected by a larger body of voters. They cannot afford to have stances on issues that are contrarian or not mainstream like they could when they were a representative. That is part of the reason why I think members of the house should be elected from a smaller body of voters. It incentivizes them to take stronger stances on positions that really matter to their voters. They can take strong positions on issues that matter to their voters and in return the voters will reelect them.

@plebeian_lobster it's a nice idea. I got a better education when classroom sizes were smaller. However I do not believe the same principles would necessarily apply here.
First the senate passes bills quicker than the house does right now. This is because of too many voices in the house.
Secondly, the United States is a multi-ethnic country and was never meant to be a multi-cultural country. I grew up in a very ethnically diverse area; that's a nice way of saying that white people were and are a virtual minority. Almost everybody I knew and friends with were not ethnically the same as I, but we shared a common culture in that we were all Americans and proud of it! That being said, i believe representation within each individual state should necessarily be at the level you were indicating., but not federally. The reason is just this. Each state has it's own constitution and governing body and is only a member state of the United States; thus each state should have and only have exactly equal representation within the federal government. As for what the politicians have to do to get elected in their own state, that should be up to that state.
As for the lobby system and all the problems with that, I still agree with Ross Perot.

@ScottGammon Perhaps. But if you read the Federalist Papers and look at the structure of the Constitution, the House and Senate were not intended to advocate for the same interests. House was the people's body of Congress; the Senate was the States's body of Congress. The States and the people were expected to have differing interests. The laws that got passed were supposed to be things that reflected what the people wanted but subject to the interests of the States--a compromise between the people's interests and the States's interests. That system allowed the States to have some power in Congress--that is not the case anymore. That system was destroyed by the 17th Amendment. I think the framers of the Constitution would be shocked at how out of control federal law has become in part because it has become too easy to pass laws. We should make it harder.

The reason we have 435 in congress and 50 in the senate was a compromise between large and small states during the establishment of the constitution. One is based on population and one is the same for each state. The idea is that the representation is proportional to the population in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, each state has equal representation.

Every 10 years during the census, the populations are identified and the number of representatives in the House are reallocated based on the census. Some states may loose representatives, some may gain, most remain the same. Regardless, the total number of the house remains the same. Incidently, this is also tied to the electoral collage where each state gets the total sum of their House and Senate representatives as electoral votes.

@plebeian_lobster i agree absolutely.
I believe the house has stopped advocating for the will of the people. They seem to only advocate for special interest or minority precepts that serve only to conflate issues that have and will have mass negative affect not only on the people, but what framers intended for the generations going forward. The house has been talking about getting rid of the electoral college and moving to a simple majority vote. This will trample the right of the vast majority of enclaves to have any real say in the way our country is run.
I believe that if we were to increase the number of representatives by population, that might well accomplish the very same thing. The Senate should have terms limited to two possibly three terms. The house should go to a four year election cycle with a three term limit.

I agree. Maybe it shouldn't be 5700, but it should be much more than 435. I agree that senators who are elected by the people should have term limits, but I am not sure about members of the house, especially if the number were increased. I think a lack of term limits could be a good thing in the House. Term limits incentivize reps to take strong positions on issues that matter to their voters. I think if we remove the possibility of reelection, we destroy that incentive. I am not sure though. I tend to lean towards limiting power, so I feel dishonest to myself for thinking maybe the House should not be term limited.

@plebeian_lobster You may well be correct, I hadn't really thought of that aspect of the Reps. You might have hit on the perfect balance.

I agree--I think there should be a citizenship question. However, the House is limited to 435. I don't understand how they would stack it.

@plebeian_lobster They are lawyers, they are trained to stretch the law.

I have faith in them.

@Phrankhs I suppose reps could be moved from one state to another. Therefore, if CA had a ton of illegal immigrants, they could steal reps from other states.

@plebeian_lobster California steals everything else so yeah, why not Reps?