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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Steven Edwards for South Carolina US House District 4

The Platform

My campaign consists of a simple platform with a singular plank. Reapportioning the United States House of Representatives.


The political body that is supposed to represent us, the US House of Representatives is no longer serving it's constitutional designed purpose. John Adams believed the purpose of the house was to represent popular interests to combat the natural aristocracy that would be represented in the Senate.
Our voice has been lost. The people have spoken out time and time again, overwhelmingly to limit bad decisions by government. We see examples of it almost daily, be it the TARP program, the so-called healthcare overhaul, certain foreign affairs and the so-called war on drugs.
This problem can be traced back to Public Law 62-5 of 1911 and the Reapportionment Act of 1929 when the Number of US House Representatives was fixed at 435. Prior to this, the the house upheld it's constitutional duty to add representatives as needed as part of the redistricting process. This is a travesty akin to the 3/5th's compromise. Taxation without adequate representation is no better than taxation without representation.
To regain our voice, we must increase the number of seats in the house to better reflect original intent. Currently each of the 435 members represents an avarage of over 700,000 citizens. I believe trying to raise the number to reflect the original approtionment of one representative per 33,000 would be impractical. With a population of over 300 Million this would result in the house having over 9000 members. Instead I propose increasing the number of representatives to 3000 or 3500 which would give each member a constituency of 100,000 to 125,000 citizens. This number should be viewed as a seven fold increase in freedom and a seven fold reduction in corruption.
It has been said that there is something along the lines of 34,000 lobbyists in Washington which at 435 members of the house works out to about 80 per congressman. If there were suddenly 2000 more members of the US house, the corrupting influence would be reduced by seven fold.
I think it's time that we teach the body politic what Adams spoke about. The lesser house exists to represent the people while the upper house exists to represent the upper class. I know class warfare is a word that is thrown around derisively but the fact is that class warfare is a natural part of our constitution. If the lower house was a proper reflection of the population at large rather than the lobbying interests, the lobbyist proxy in the senate would not have the power it currently has to buy some of the votes we've see

Steven for Congress

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