Mr. Beat: Why are there only 435 members in the U.S. House of Representatives?

 

[VIDEO] Let's start with this, the number of Representatives in the lower house of Congress is set by statute the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. Check out this apportionment sheet from visitthecapitol.gov

In the beginning when the nation only had 13 states - 13 colonies, 13 states - the expectation was 1 Representative for every 30,000 citizen. Of course now America is about 300 million people since the constitution was enacted in 1789. 

America's population has grown and the point of this recent video by Mr. Beat is that the number of representatives doesn't represent the vast population of this nation and perhaps we need a lot more than 435 members of the U.S. House of Reps. 

Another part of this argument is that the bureaucracy has grown to the point that many executive agencies have taken on some duties that would normally be taken up by the US Congress - both houses. To increase the number of representatives would probably allow the Congress to function the way it was designed to.

Here's a website called No Cap Fund that advocates for increasing the number of Representives in Congress.

And just for the record the number of US Senators is 100. Two per state, regardless of population while the U.S. House the number of Representatives each state has is determined by population. Which is why some states lose Representatives while other states gain Representatives. If your state drops in population as Illinois had in 2020 that that extra representative gets sent to another state.

I would say states that grow in population which would I would say are such states such as Texas, Florida, Georgia to name a few off the top of my head. They would gain more representatives from those states which have lost population.

Having watch this video or even read up on this subject do you think there needs to be more Representatives in the US Congress?