The US House has had 435 seats since 1910.

Democrats have held at least 200 seats in the House since 1930. The GOP was unable to hold this many seats for such a long amount of time. Time after time the GOP has fallen below 200 seats.

http://www.answers.com/U.S.%20House%20election%2C%201928

http://www.answers.com/U.S.%20House%20election%2C%201930

...and of course, the best congress:

http://www.answers.com/U.S.%20House%20election%2C%201930

Also, the Democrats are at a 72 YEAR low with Senate seats (44). The GOP has been lower than that many times.

We are in a strong position to take back congress next year. We only need 15 seats to gain a 1 seat majority. The GOP needed 42 seats to gain back the House in 1994.

http://www.answers.com/U.S.%20House%20election%2C%201992

http://www.answers.com/U.S.%20House%20election%2C%201994

Without some serious election reform your analysis is a moot point unfortunately.

I've wanted to expand the size of the House. There's no way anyone can represent nearly 3/4 of a million people. They artificially capped the number of representatives for their own convenience. Simple legislation is all that would be required to add members.

about a year and a half ago, and deviating from his usual psychotic drivel, he actually made a few compelling arguments in favor of expanding the size of the house.

I kind of wonder if smaller representative districts in other countries makes their governments more responsive. For instance in Canada ridings typically have in the neighborhood of 100,000 people. (I think mine has about 120K.) I get the vague sense that this puts our MP more in touch with the constituents and vice versa, although I could be wrong.

The downside of House expansion is that for it to have any real impact, you'd have to at least quadruple the size of the House. A legislative body of 1,700 people could be a logistical nightmare. Nevertheless, it's an idea worth kicking around.

I support a massive expansion of congressional representation. I'd be all for doubling the number of representatives and halving their budget - or doubling the overall administrative budget and quadrupling the number of representatives.

I think that representatives should then be elected using some form of proportional representation from multi member districts, preferably 5 or more congressmen from one, larger district. It chaps my ass to think that the party with the most votes gets all the say - regardless of whether or not they got 40% of the vote or 80% of the vote. I personally like Mixed Member Proportional a sort of proportional hybrid of geographic district voting and straight proportional elections.

Furthermore, to truly make government more responsive, many of the federal functions must be devolved to the states. While I disagree with their goals, you can find many Libertarian and Constitutional Party tracts delineating massive cuts to the Federal Government. I personally think we could have a $600B Federal Government, as long as a few other things are taken care of. (Half of our budget goes to military, and our military spends just about as much as every other military combined).

Typically, the contravening factor in devolving federal functions to the states are the state's abilities to adequately fund these functions. Liberals fear a race to the bottom as each state would have to compete with others on a taxes v. programs. The fear is that states could not maintain tax rates at the current level of the federal government without losing population, jobs, and businesses to other states with lower tax rates. This is due to the inertia and entrenched nature of the income tax in our national psyche. Actually, states can raise much more revenue per capita than the federal government can, because they have the ability to tax property.

Property taxes are particularly harmful as taxes go: they discourage development, reducing the availability and increasing the cost of housing and places of business. Fortunately, this is entirely due to only one half of the property tax - that portion of the tax that falls on buildings & man-made improvements. Each state may choose to allow its localities to tax land at a higher rate than buildings, many states have already allowed this (though only Pennsylvania actually has jurisdictions that do this, to a small degree). Taxing land values is not economically harmful, as it does not reduce supply, as the supply of land is naturally fixed. This is not to say that there wouldn't be individual repercussions from a sudden shift, but rather that the benefits would outweigh the costs, while the costs could be minimized with a gradual application.

The only 'state' level government I have analyzed for this type of tax is the District of Columbia. According to property assessments, DC has ~$50B in land values - and DC assessments are notoriously undervalued. $50B in land values could be annualized to roughly $3B in annual rental values - the maximum possible revenue. DC's current budget is roughly $4B, obviously more than the amount currently available through an extreme land value tax. However, this fails to account for the economic boon and associated real estate appreciation that would occur if other, more harmful taxes were eliminated. Merely eliminating the sales tax would make DC a shopping haven for most of MD and VA. Some economists theorize that any reduction in other taxes would be seen as a direct increase in rental values.

There would be other benefits as well: with no tax 'wedge' between the cost to employers and the wages paid to employees, employment would increase. The aforementioned lack of a sales tax would increase the number of retail sales jobs, putting many of DC's lesser skilled residents to work. The lack of building tax, and the elimination of profit for those who withold lots for speculative gain, would increase the housing stock in DC by thousands, making ownership in DC, which is a very expensive market, affordable to thousands of families. Public investments in transit, and other public goods, would raise the available public revenue.

In short, states have the MEANS to take over federal functions (who really thinks that elected federal officials should have more say in education choices than local parents) they just need the WILL to do so.