When the Few do not Represent the Many

Today's Congress is inadequate. There are 100 members in the Senate, and 435 in the House. That seems like a lot right? Wrong. Now, you might be asking, "Whats the big deal Yams, who cares?" Well, I care, and so should you. The number of Congressmen in the House has been set at 435 since 1911 when Public Law 62-5 was enacted. 1911. My Grandparents weren't even alive back then. Now back then, 435 might have fit the bill, but in today's world, not so much.

You want to know what else happened in 1911? The first Indy-500 race was run, Chevy entered the automobile market, and 1911 also marked the first time an aircraft landed on a boat. The populations knowledge-base has grown tremendously since 1911, as has the way we do things; just look at how much the Indy-500 has changed in the last 96 years.




Today we aren't worrying about how to use combustion engines in a way such as to assist farmers or how to do basic surgery without the patient getting an infection, today we worry about how to genetically modify crops by mixing DNA from different organisms and how to harness the power of stem cells, all while keeping everything safe and without trying to cross any boundaries. So what's the big deal? I'll tell you the big deal. Our Congressmen don't have the knowledge-base to keep up with society's.

So how do we fix this? I'm a results kind of guy. Complaining about how most of our senators don't even know what a blastocyst is isn't going to solve the issue. However, putting people into Congress who do know that a blastocyst is a very early stage of embryo development when stem cells can be harvested just might. I see two options.

1. We could add more Congressmen, but that would probably just lead to more fights and childish filibusters.
   
2. My favorite, we stop electing the same type of person into Congress and start treating it how it was supposed to be, a small representation of everyone in America where the people voice there opinions and create laws based on those.

Are farmers, bakers, ditch-diggers, roofers, and semi-drivers Americans? Yes. Should their opinion matter just as much as anyone else's? Yes. Do the rich politicians in Washington represent them or have any idea what their lives are like? My best guess; no. Do those same politicians know as much about cutting edge research in Chemistry or Biology as any graduate student here at Purdue who studies in those fields? Probably not. Do those politicians vote on and basically have the final word on, minus a Presidential Veto, laws that determine what is ethical and what the scientific community is allowed to research? Yes. Should they? That's up to us, the people who vote these guys into Congress.