Back last June, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted that House Democrats “would turn us into a country we’ve never been.” He used the S word to describe the Democrats’ wish of granting congressional seats to the people of Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico:
They plan to make the District of Columbia a state — that’d give them two new Democratic senators — Puerto Rico a state, that would give them two more new Democratic senators. And as a former Supreme Court clerk yourself, you’ve surely noticed that they plan to expand the Supreme Court. So this is full bore socialism on the march in the House. And yeah, as long as I’m the majority leader of the Senate, none of that stuff is going anywhere. McConnel speaking with Laura Ingram on FOX
Not even all Republicans agree with McConnell. The Republican Party’s official platform has been to “support the right of the United States citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign state.” Even Jenniffer González-Colón, the Republican who represents Puerto Rico as a non-voting member — joined the territory’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, to support a statehood bill.
So howsit that statehood is socialism? The founders created a confederation .. balancing the interests of tiny Rpde IslanD with the thOSE of Virginia were 3/5 of each slave counted toward the vote.
Then there is the 2016 election where capitalism, I suppose, triumphed when a minority fo Americans defeated Hillary Clinton and elected Donal Trump?
The use of NEWSPEAK is not new here. McConnell is defending against “full-bore socialism” because full representative inclusion of Puerto Rico and D.C. would cause profound shifts to the power balance of the parties — not to mention the Electoral College. Four additional seats in the Senate that skew Democratic could cancel out the Republican advantage of more representation with fewer votes: . D.C., at 702,455, has more people than Vermont or Wyoming. With a pre-Maria population of almost 3.2 million, Puerto Rico is home to more Americans than 21 states.
With the house artificially and arguable unconstitutionally fixed at a arbitrary number there is greater incentive not to grant either D or Puerto Rico statehood, not to mention Guam. It is not socialist to admit states to the Union, but democrats have been loath to add either when they have been in the majority or had their person in the White House able to use the bully pulpit to support statehood.
So maybe it is time to increase the number of members in the House as that would address the central issue here, go a long way to fix the potential issues in the electoral collage, make control of the house more difficult for either major party, and remove the disincentive to add additional states, after all Cuba could apply, wouldn’t be fun. (And the representatives and Senators might be real socialists/communists, ohhh scary.)
I guess you can argue about anything, Mark, and argue anything you want; but in terms of how lawyers read the term “arguably” as a term of art, the Reapportionment Act of 1929 isn’t arguably unconstitutional, or if it is, the Act has been on the statute books for a very long time (90 years) without anyone taking that argument to the Supreme Court (the final arbiter of what is or isn’t constitutional). The Constitution doesn’t set the number of representatives, so Congress has done so, and nothing in the Constitution requires any particular number other than each state gets at least one and a district can’t have a population less than 30,000.