Bad Max

One of the first articles I ever wrote for The American Prospect was about Max Baucus, who's both a strikingly terrible Democrat and takes strikingly little heat for it since he's not really much of a grandstander. At any rate, his suckitude continues as yesterday he helped vote against a plan to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives. His reason?

Baucus said in a written statement that he opposed the bill because Montana has only one House vote. "If we were to expand the House, Montana's voice would become less influential," he said.

Chris Orr brings the math:

Now, my back-of-the-envelope calculation--and I hope readers will feel free to correct it if it's wrong--finds that Montana's single House vote currently makes up 0.2299 percent of the total House vote. If the House were expanded from 435 members to 437, Montana's share would drop to 0.2288 percent. Yes, Baucus felt obligated to vote against any federal representation for residents of the District of Columbia, because it would reduce the relative clout of his states' residents (in the House only, the Senate would be unaffected) by one-thousandth of one percent.

And, of course, Montana would be ludicrously overrepresented in congress whether or not DC got a vote.

Comments

Looks like, relatively, the drop should be about half of one percent (~2/400).

Posted by Barry | September 19, 2007 12:21 PM

You know, I was looking at Article 4 of the Constitution, as well as the vote count on the DC bill, and realized that if we picked up a sizable number of Senate seats, we wouldn't be too far off from the (theoretical) number needed to pass a flat-out statehood vote. The criteria for statehood is just a vote by Congress. The politics might be very different for an actual statehood vote that would give us Senators and everything, but it's not as outlandish as I thought - and certainly less elaborate a process than a Constitutional amendment to give non-statehood voting rights to DC.

Posted by SDM | September 19, 2007 12:29 PM

Someone turn off the italics! I am reading everything with extra emphasis!

Posted by bobbo | September 19, 2007 12:30 PM

I'm in favor of DC representation, but it's worth pointing out that Montana has a population of 902,000 (2000 Census) and only has one representative in the House, which does not strike me as "ludicrously overrepresented." Now, if you want to drag the Senate into it, I guess your point stands, but since DC is not going to get Senate representation under this bill I don't see how that's germane.

Posted by Colorado Luis | September 19, 2007 12:30 PM

It's a terrible excuse, but under the circumstances I'm inclined to take any excuse for somebody casting the right vote. And voting against this unconstitutional scheme IS the right vote, even if he did it for a stupid reason.

Look, just go for statehood; It would still be bad policy, but it would be constitutional bad policy.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 19, 2007 12:31 PM

You'd have to tie the statehood to repeal of the amendment giving D.C. a vote in the electoral college, of course, which somewhat complicates the matter.

Of course, the downside of statehood is that the District wouldn't be under the Federal government's thumb anymore. (This is a downside from Congress' perspective, not the District's, I mean...)

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 19, 2007 12:37 PM

Montana is actually the most populous state to only have one representative. It's got 944,632 people (2006 estimate) while Rhode Island has only 120,000 more people and two representatives. That's 533,805 people per House seat... or around 50,000 fewer people than live in D.C.

The second most-underrepresented state, by the way, is Utah. 850,021 people per house seat. They stood to gain parity with most other states (we're ideally supposed to have 650-700k people per seat) if the DCVote bill passed.

Posted by David Weigel | September 19, 2007 12:39 PM

I say if they won't give us a representative vote in Congress (2 Senate, 1 Rep), then do away with our have to pay Federal income taxes. If I can't be represented in congress, I'll settle for lower taxes.

Posted by dantonj | September 19, 2007 12:52 PM

Perhaps we should just give back to Maryland everything other than the actual governing areas.

Posted by DHN | September 19, 2007 12:59 PM

I agree with Brett that it is unconstitutional:

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the Pepole of the several States." Art. I, Section 2.

"The Congress shall have Power . . . over such Distrcit (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government . . . ." Art. I, Section 8.

Perhaps Congress should just give back to Maryland everything other than the actual governing areas.

Posted by DHN | September 19, 2007 1:03 PM

Of course it is unconstitutional. But when have the Democrats ever cared about constitutionality? And why would they care now when there is an extra vote for their side at stake? Power rules all in DC, constitutionality be damned.

That said, ceding the territory back to Maryland seems fine, to me.

Posted by Al | September 19, 2007 1:08 PM

Seems like a fairly obvious point, but influence in Congress isn't a function of the proportion of the vote you hold. It's a function of whether you're in the majority. I'm guessing Max has been feeling a lot more influential since the 2006 mid-terms.

Of course, political leverage also goes up significantly when the House is closely divided. If the vote is evenly split, everyone gets to play tie-breaker. In this sense, Max may be right -- if granting representation to DC increases the Democratic majority, Montana's influence could go down significantly. But this seems like a pretty stupid game to play.

Posted by Adam | September 19, 2007 1:11 PM

David Weigel's point is a good one. Since representatives only occur in integral numbers, the way to decrease the small unfairness produced by "rounding" would be to expand the size of the House. If we'd kept the same representative-to-population ratio used originally, the House would have 10,000 seats. That might be unmanageable, but surely 1,000 would be doable. There's nothing magic about the number 435.

Posted by KCinDC | September 19, 2007 1:13 PM

Power rules all in DC

Were you under the impression that politics was about something else. Yes, it's about power-- DC residents don't have it, so they get screwed, and whatever craphole you come from gets the choice public-works earmark instead of us. I don't support representation for DC because I love the District. I support it because I hate wherever you're from.

And, yeah, 500,000 - 900,000 citizens per house district is ridiculous. The number of Representatives in the house should be doubled, if not tripled.

Posted by Tyro | September 19, 2007 1:13 PM

Max isn't worried about the decline in representation for Montana. He (and everyone else opposed to DC getting a representative) is worried about the increase in representation for black people. DC, where I live, is awfully small for two senators, but it certainly deserves a represenative. But residual racism runs deep in the USA. Those blacks have Obama already! What more do they want? Besides, Marion Berry is a jerk!

Posted by Alan Vanneman | September 19, 2007 1:15 PM

Al,
The Democrats have cared about constitutionality, for instance, just this morning, when every single one of them voted to restore habeas corpus rights. Just as a for instance.

Posted by Houdini's Ghost | September 19, 2007 1:17 PM

I say call the bluff of conservatives who keep saying "oh it needs to be a state or else it's not constitutional" - push for statehood. A full two Senators and a Representative for the District of Columbia sounds like a fine plan to me. DC's population is larger than Wyoming's, and Wyoming gets two Senators and a Rep.

This whole idea that the capitol needs to be on "neutral ground" is a red herring in this day and age. It made sense when our Federal government was presiding over a loose federation of separate nation-states, but after the Civil War things were never going to go back that way again.

Posted by NonyNony | September 19, 2007 1:22 PM

Not to be rude, but bloggers complaining about the D.C. voting rights bill have a remedy already- move. To Virginia. To Maryland. To the backwoods of Maine. You guys do all of your work from home, don't you? (Yglesias- you said you rarely if ever show up at the office because you procrastinate when you do). Your jobs aren't dependent on physically being anywhere near D.C., right?

I mean, I know it isn't as fun as criticizing Max Baucus for something he said that is factually accurate, but you all could just move to the 'burbs and be free from your oppressed existence as D.C. residents...Or you could all write a blog entry about this rather trivial matter, complaining about your lack of representation but refusing to move even though you have the means and job flexibility to do so. I know which way I'm going to bet...

Posted by P | September 19, 2007 1:26 PM

Al is very concerned about this Democratic attempt to get "an extra vote for their side." Oh, Noes!

Meanwhile, back here on this planet, the bill proposes to balance the new presumably Democratic voting Representative from DC with a new presumably Republican Representative from Utah.

I realize there is no way Al could possibly have learned this detail until I commented, so it's good I'm here to help.

Frankly, as a reform as representation, this change (while overdue) is pretty weak. Whether or not DC gets one representative, California will still send two senators representing a population equal to how many Wyomings?

Posted by Warren Terra | September 19, 2007 1:29 PM

"Not to be rude, but bloggers complaining about the D.C. voting rights bill have a remedy already- move. To Virginia. To Maryland. To the backwoods of Maine."

Exactly. Why didn't these annoying colonist move to Britain if they were so keen on taxation with representation? Why didn't all the blacks move to Montana instead of whining endlessly about Jim Crow?

Posted by Patrick | September 19, 2007 1:34 PM

Not to be rude, but bloggers complaining about the D.C. voting rights bill have a remedy already- move.

Not really rude, so much as dumb. I don't think that the people complaining about this are complaining about the lack of representation for D.C. bloggers, per se. Should everyone move out of the district?

More generally, though, the whole "if you don't like something then move" argument is pretty retarded. What's wrong with fixing the thing?

Posted by Adam | September 19, 2007 1:36 PM

For my money, I prefer making D.C. tax free until Congress gives residents the vote. Washington: the Monaco of the East Coast!

Posted by Greg Greene | September 19, 2007 1:39 PM

The Democrats have cared about constitutionality, for instance, just this morning, when every single one of them voted to restore habeas corpus rights.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals says you're wrong.

Posted by Al | September 19, 2007 1:46 PM

"Meanwhile, back here on this planet, the bill proposes to balance the new presumably Democratic voting Representative from DC with a new presumably Republican Representative from Utah."

Another unconstitutional aspect; Assigning another new House seat without respect to the census, just declaring Utah gets it.

Look, statehood is constitutional, retrocession is constitutional. Amending the Constitution to give D.C. a House seat is constitutional. Moving is constitutional. Making D.C. a pseudo state with a vote in the House, without amending the Constitution? Not constitutional. That should be the end of it, given that every member of Congress has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution which forbids this act.

I don't like the proposed precident, allowing Congress to create seats for non-states. There's no end of the mischief future Congressional majorities could do, utilizing that power to add non-state members by statute. It would allow a temporary majority to lock itself in by manufacturing additional safe seats, a kind of Congress packing to match FDR's proposed Court packing. Particularly nasty is the fact that these new members would represent areas still totally under the thumb of the federal government!

I'm just paranoid enough to think the desire for that capablity is exactly why Democrats don't want to use one of the constitutional routes to giving D.C. a vote.

Just do it (one of) the right way(s), or not at all.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 19, 2007 1:54 PM

But when have the Democrats ever cared about constitutionality?

and of course the Republicans who backed purely for the partisan reasons of picking up another Congressional vote in Congress and an additional Electoral vote cared about Constitutionality, Al? At least the Democrats can argue that there is a principle of remedying the denial of some Americans their fundamental rights because of a quirk in the Constitution - what is the Republican excuse except for raw partisanship?

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | September 19, 2007 1:58 PM

Ken Starr says it's constitutional. Viet Dinh says it's constitutional.

I'm tired of people like Al and Brett claiming that it's "obviously" unconstitutional, as if they have the final word on the subject.

Posted by Steve | September 19, 2007 2:05 PM

Here's Ken Starr's testimony to Congress which succinctly lays out the legal arguments.

I look forward to hearing from Brett which aspect of these arguments he thinks is obviously wrong, and why.

Posted by Steve | September 19, 2007 2:06 PM

Brett, educate yourself on the issue before spouting off. Plenty of people who know the Constitution think it's constitutional. It's not as black-and-white as you think.

And the Utah seat wasn't "without respect to the census". The bill simply expanded the size of the House, and Utah happened to be the state that would get the new seat, by the normal allocation process. That was what sparked the idea of this bill in the first place.

Posted by KCinDC | September 19, 2007 2:17 PM

Not to be rude, but bloggers complaining about the D.C. voting rights bill have a remedy already- move.

Yes, because everyone who chooses to live in DC deserves to be treated like second class citizens in the country that it's the capitol of.

You do realize that there are over half-a-million people in DC who are the recipients of "Taxation without Representation" (as the license plate at least used to say at one time) - right? Half a million US citizens who get no representation in the legislature and your solution is "they should move".

Meanwhile, Wyoming has a population of under half-a-million and they not only get a Representative - they get two Senators as well. I wouldn't advocate taking away their representation, but why are they more "deserving" of it than the half-a-million citizens who live in Washington D.C.?

Posted by NonyNony | September 19, 2007 2:19 PM

"What's wrong with fixing the thing?"

Ah, yes. If by "fixing the thing" you mean complaining about Max Baucus on your blog, then I guess we have a different idea of what "fixing the thing" means. To me, there's only two ways to do it: amend the Consitution or, as I mentioned, move.

But as you pointed out, I'm more dumb than rude, so perhaps I don't actually know what "fixing" means...(I'll bet that smart guys like yourself and Patrick can see the difference between people without the means/job flexibility to leave D.C. and people who in fact have those means, which leaves me wondering why either of you compare Chris Orr and Matt Yglesias to people who cannot leave D.C. Their not exactly similarly situated.)

Alas- I'll take my own advice and "move"- I'll bet Andrew Sullivan is saying something worthwhile...

Posted by P | September 19, 2007 2:20 PM

Ken Starr says it's constitutional. Viet Dinh says it's constitutional.

I'm tired of people like Al and Brett claiming that it's "obviously" unconstitutional, as if they have the final word on the subject.

To be fair to Al and Brett, Ken Starr and Viet Dinh are no more qualified as Constitutional thinkers than my golden retriever. It would have been nice, however, if conservatives could have admitted this before Whitewater, the PATRIOT Act, and so on.

Posted by cminus | September 19, 2007 2:37 PM

Max may be a bad senator, but at least he admits it.

Posted by Wrongshore | September 19, 2007 2:39 PM

In my previous post, "I'm tired of people like Al and Brett claiming that it's "obviously" unconstitutional, as if they have the final word on the subject" was also part of the original poster's words. Not sure why it didn't format properly.

Posted by cminus | September 19, 2007 2:40 PM

Re Max Baucus

Is Mr. Yglesias now saying that Baucus is worse then Joe Lieberman or has Mr. Lieberman now been rehabilitated because he was one of the sponsors of the bill?

Posted by SLC | September 19, 2007 2:44 PM

That said, ceding the territory back to Maryland seems fine, to me.
Posted by Al

Not fine with Maryland. They don't want it back.

Would you want a city with a declining population, full of parasites and violent felons that made it the murder capital of the USA? With such a poor tax base that it gets 6.48 dollars in federal aid for every tax dollar paid out?

Maryland doesn't.

On the other hand, small states, even red ones are not keen to dilute their representation by establishing a precedent with DC that Guam, Samoa, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Marshall Island Trust can all take advantage of. Or carving out other shithole cities from existing States and defying State legislatures District apportionments.
And if it ever passed the House, and the Constitutionality is in doubt despite one camp of scholars saying Congress can add a thousand new seats in defiance of the States if it wishes, legally, that Bill would have to get through the Senate where a lot of little States would be a whole lot of pissed. So it is moot.

And we all know, that as soon as such a measure was passed, that Eleanor Holmes Norton would be standing up in her "strong, black, dignified voice" and demanding Senate seats because without a Senate Seat for Jesse and a Seat for Marion Barry - taxation without representation would be perpetuated.

The realistic option I see is to leave if you are so concerned with taxation without representation. But the truth is that any parasite or thug in DC would be foolish to do so because no other place gets as good a return on their tax dollars - 6.48 bucks for every 1 buck DC gives to the Feds. It's schools, city services, police, and various "make work" projects heavily subsidized by the States taxpayers - or outright granted.

Posted by Chris Ford | September 19, 2007 2:44 PM

Another good Lefty scam I heard of - besides Statehood or variants for the parasites of the Imperial City - was using the "no taxation without representation" slogan to give House seats to the 318 Federally-recognized "sovereign nation" Indian tribes.

Posted by Chris Ford | September 19, 2007 2:51 PM

Chris Ford is angry about those darn black folks again (now with bonus Indians!). Quelle surprise.

Posted by Warren Terra | September 19, 2007 2:56 PM

On the other hand, small states, even red ones are not keen to dilute their representation by establishing a precedent with DC that Guam, Samoa, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Marshall Island Trust can all take advantage of.

To be clear, every argument I've ever seen in favor of the constitutionality of granting voting rights to DC makes clear that the Constitution sets up DC as a special case. I don't know of any colorable argument that says Congress would be empowered to grant Congressional representation to Guam or any other non-State territory.

Posted by Steve | September 19, 2007 2:59 PM

If David Weigel is right (Sept 19, 12:39 PM) then why would the bill have given the other extra seat to Utah and not Montana?

Posted by Chris | September 19, 2007 3:11 PM

Geeze, Cminus, you want me to take that kind of blatent sophistry seriously? Nobody who really cares about complying with the Constitution can get past that "people of the several states" language;

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature."

"... be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen."

"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states..."

"When vacancies happen in the Representation from any state..."

The Constitution is just packed with language making it crystal clear that only states get representatives. It just does not leave wiggle room for people residing in anything but a state to be represented. But sophistry is rather widespread among constitutional scholars today, it's the only way to square practice with the Constitution it supposedly is based on.

For that matter, it's beyond me why anyone living in D.C. would want Starr's position to be taken seriously as a matter of law. He's basicly asserting that Congress is OMNIPOTENT within the district, that it can do flat out anything, including outrages that would be beyond the power of any state to perpetrate. What sane person would want representation in the House at the price of such vulnerablity?

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 19, 2007 3:12 PM

Don't worry, Chris, DC has changed enough in recent years that Marion Barry won't be winning any citywide elections again -- but you wouldn't know about that, since you're still living in an era when DC had "declining population". So it may be a while before DC could get around to electing paragons of virtue like Larry Craig, Ted Stevens, Mark Foley, Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, and William Jefferson.

And Jesse Jackson isn't likely to do that well in DC after his performance as "shadow senator" some years back, in which he did very little. People don't think of him as a DC person, and I don't think he views himself as one. Isn't he a resident of Chicago?

Posted by KCinDC | September 19, 2007 3:15 PM

"To be clear, every argument I've ever seen in favor of the constitutionality of granting voting rights to DC makes clear that the Constitution sets up DC as a special case."

But, of course, it doesn't; In the very same passage Congress is granted exactly the same jurisdiction over any land it buys from the states with their permission. So even a minimal reading of Starr's argument would empower Congress to grant representation to every military base, government office building, and federal park.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 19, 2007 3:19 PM

The realistic option I see is to leave...

(a) What if you can't leave? Not because you're too poor, but because you don't live in DC and think that DC should be given representation? What then? It seems that your only solution is to demand representation for DC

(b) Next, why not simply make DC exempt from federal taxes?

Also, interesting that you complain that DC is such a loser-city because, among other reasons, it has a "declining population," and THEN say that the solution for anyone getting shafted over DC's lack of representation is to leave.

Posted by Tyro | September 19, 2007 3:21 PM

From what you are saying, Montana would, with a larger population, have fewer representatives than Utah. Why should Montana's representative vote for that?

The deal should either be to give DC the vote, period, or to give DC, Utah and Montana each one vote. One Democrat, one Republican and one open seat. Who's to say which party would win the Montana seat - the voters there?

Posted by putnam | September 19, 2007 3:27 PM

Of course people who aren't from DC think that it's "fairest" to give back to Maryland. But DC has been not-part-of-Maryland for longer than Texas has been not-part-of-Mexico. DC has been a discrete political and cultural unit for longer than most states.

The whole business of other people getting to decide what's right for a political polity whose members no say in the decision is getting kind of annoying. I hear that it's a "rather trivial matter," that it should be part of another state, or that half a million tax-paying, draftable Americans should be required to pull up stakes and leave their historically distinct community in exchange for getting the rights available to other Americans. Thanks, everybody, for deciding for us what the "realistic" and "fair" thing is.

I'm not broken-hearted over the failure of the half-assed, "may-we-pretty-please-have-some-rights-if-we-give-Utah-a seat" bill. This because I think that DC should be granted statehood. That's what I'd call "fixing the thing."

Of course, some might say this is just a "scam" meant to benefit "parasites" and "thugs." Those people are entitled to their opinion; no one else is obliged to take it seriously.

Posted by SDM | September 19, 2007 3:31 PM

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals says you're wrong.
Al, I thought conservatives wanted legislative solutions over court decisions. What was that about who was interested in power again?

Posted by Lynn | September 19, 2007 3:38 PM

In 1978 (or thereabouts; not sure of the exact year) Congress actually approved a constitutional amendment (by a two-thirds vote, of course, and with a fair amount of Republican support) giving D.C. full representation in Congress - both houses. If was not, however, ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the states. I believe that, like the ERA and unlike what became the 27th Amendment, it had a built-in deadline and therefore is no longer viable. Nonetheless, it's odd that the whole affair seems to be completely forgotten by the media.

Posted by James Kabala | September 19, 2007 3:55 PM

From what you are saying, Montana would, with a larger population, have fewer representatives than Utah. Why should Montana's representative vote for that?

Montana's 2000 population was 902,195, while Utah's was 2,233,169, so I don't understand your point. Montana has 1 seat, while Utah has 3. If 1 seat were added to the House, that seat would go to Utah, by the same allocation formula used every 10 years, which is a bit too complicated to explain here.

One could certainly envision a different allocation formula (and there have been changes over the years) that would give the seat to Montana instead because it's in some sense more underrepresented, but that would be a big change that would shuffle all sorts of seats around between states.

Posted by KCinDC | September 19, 2007 4:26 PM

James K - Yes, it was 1978; the amendment expired in 1985 with 16 ratifications.

One might note of course that the 2/3rds vote of both houses on the amendment (289-127 and 67-32: see http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Voting_rights_in_the_District_of_Columbia)
.would have been more than sufficient to have cloture on a statehood bill, had the same votes held.

Posted by empiricus | September 19, 2007 4:45 PM

by one-thousandth of one percentage point

Posted by c | September 19, 2007 5:33 PM

I believe the argument about the extra Utah representative wasn't so much about whether it or Montana was more under-represented, it had to do with the accuracy or fairness of the means of counting the rather substantial part of the (typically very young) Utah population that was out of the state on Mormon missions. And that the state the beat out Utah for the 435th seat was in fact North Carolina.

For what it's worth I'm fully with those who want the house expanded well beyond the current 435. Perhaps a constitutional amendment setting the maximum number of people per representative at 400,000 or something like that?

Posted by Gene O'Grady | September 19, 2007 9:19 PM

Keep in mind his argument applies to every other state. Each state will lose the same percentage of clout. The formula, where n is the number of current representatives, would be ((n/435)-(n/437))/(n/435), where n/435 is current clout and n/437 is future clout, which after factoring shows it is not dependent on n, it's just 1-435/437, about half a percent.

So every state loses equally. By the same logic, Max, no single state or representative from a state should have ever voted to admit Montana into the Union. And, in reverse, every state should now vote to kick Montana out, or at least make it a territory, since it'll bump up their own relative representation.

Come to think of it, maybe you're on to something.

Posted by JPK | September 19, 2007 10:19 PM

But one-thousandth of one percent less ludicrously overrepresented.

Posted by aleks | September 20, 2007 10:05 AM