At five days on the fifteenth ballot McCarthy won 216 to Jefferies 212 with six voting present. Now comes the vote for the House Rules. The thought is the Republicans do not have the votes to set the rules tonight. Looks like the agenda for the next two years is to investigate the Biden administration. The challenge will be to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government for next year (2024).
Indeed. Is there no equivalent to the pairing system that operates here, NZ, Canada and the UK. If for some reason, such as bereavement or medical treatment, a parliamentarian is unable to attend, a member of the other side is also temporarily absent. They are said to be paired.
Indeed. Is there no equivalent to the pairing system that operates here, NZ, Canada and the UK. If for some reason, such as bereavement or medical treatment, a parliamentarian is unable to attend, a member of the other side is also temporarily absent. They are said to be paired.
Once upon a time there was, and maybe there still is from time to time. But not for something like this in Washington these days.
Indeed. Is there no equivalent to the pairing system that operates here, NZ, Canada and the UK. If for some reason, such as bereavement or medical treatment, a parliamentarian is unable to attend, a member of the other side is also temporarily absent. They are said to be paired.
Once upon a time there was, and maybe there still is from time to time. But not for something like this in Washington these days.
To the degree such a system still exists it's more common in the Senate than the House. The Senate has always considered itself the more genteel of the chambers. The House is where the wild things are.
I believe the pairing phenomenon did occur during WWII when representatives from the two parties simultaneously went into the armed forces. I don't have a reference to prove it.
In high school civics, over 55 years ago, I was taught that if one representative of one party was not able to attend a session, the other party would agree to have one of their representatives not vote during a session. Not sure if the nonvoting representative would be allowed on the floor while the initial representative was away.
I believe the pairing phenomenon did occur during WWII when representatives from the two parties simultaneously went into the armed forces. I don't have a reference to prove it.
Recent DOD directives indicate if a congressman or senator is on active duty for more than 270 days, they must resign from the congress.
Representative Adam Kizinger deployed to the Southern Border with his Air National Guard was called up for duty. I believe the deployment was for 90 days, though. That was in 2019.
This Wikipedia talks about the practice of pairing in different countries' legislatures.
In the US, it was never formally part of either chamber's rules, and when it occurred it usually was an informal agreement between two members of the same party on opposite sides of a vote, because as we have seen there can be considerable division within our parties (although pairing has on occasion happened with members of opposite parties).
I had tried to find the text of McCarthy's acceptance speech. I know he railed about stopping the Woke Culture. It has been something he has been harping on for quite some time. Excuse me, what is the alternative? To stay asleep or ignorant about the past? Our history has been so WHITE WASHED. Sad.
This Wikipedia talks about the practice of pairing in different countries' legislatures.
In the US, it was never formally part of either chamber's rules, and when it occurred it usually was an informal agreement between two members of the same party on opposite sides of a vote, because as we have seen there can be considerable division within our parties (although pairing has on occasion happened with members of opposite parties).
The complicating factor in the Speaker's election is that it's not a simple binary vote. There are multiple possible options/candidates, particularly this year. "Pairing" a McCarthy supporter with a Jeffries supporter would do nothing other than amplify the not!McCarthy faction's share of the vote.
Although many might expect Santos to resign or be expelled, this is unlikely as (a) he has absolutely no shame and (b) he is a reliable vote for the Speaker. Of course, anytime he says anything at all in the House, someone can speak up and ask whether what he has lied. How can anything he says be believed?
What will happen if Congress (ie the House) refuses to raise the debt ceiling?
Either nothing or a global financial crisis. Nobody has, as I understand it, been quite able to predict which. It may be that, when push comes to shove, the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional.
It may be that, when push comes to shove, the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional.
Quite likely. The debt ceiling was enacted for idiosyncratic reasons during the First World War and has remained on the books ever since. As far as I know no other country has an equivalent law. It certainly runs afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment's stricture that "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." It also puts the president in a bind since he's obligated to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" (Art. II, §3) and the spending that's bumping up against the debt ceiling was duly passed into law by Congress. The problem is that the dubious constitutionality of the debt ceiling would take time to resolve, during which the U.S. would miss a bunch of payments which would cause the aforementioned global financial crisis.
It may be that, when push comes to shove, the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional.
Quite likely. The debt ceiling was enacted for idiosyncratic reasons during the First World War and has remained on the books ever since. As far as I know no other country has an equivalent law. It certainly runs afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment's stricture that "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." It also puts the president in a bind since he's obligated to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" (Art. II, §3) and the spending that's bumping up against the debt ceiling was duly passed into law by Congress. The problem is that the dubious constitutionality of the debt ceiling would take time to resolve, during which the U.S. would miss a bunch of payments which would cause the aforementioned global financial crisis.
Part of the problem with deciding the constitutionality of the debt ceiling restrictions is you have a conservative SCOTUS. Would they uphold the law, or affirm the constitution?
Part of the problem with deciding the constitutionality of the debt ceiling restrictions is you have a conservative SCOTUS. Would they uphold the law, or affirm the constitution?
No, the real question is which law the current SCOTUS would uphold. There are two competing laws here. There's appropriations made by Congress (which are a matter of law) stating that certain spending must happen, and there's the debt ceiling, which says the U.S. cannot have more than $X of debt on its books. Since the spending laws passed by Congress would lead to breaking the debt ceiling law passed by Congress you have a case where the SCOTUS would have to decide which law takes precedence. Given the Constitutional background of the Fourteenth Amendment (see above) I'd favor the appropriations over the debt ceiling, but I'm not a Supreme Court Justice.
If I were placing a bet I'd guess the Roberts court would rule against the debt ceiling. They're very pro-business and crashing the economy is fairly anti-business.
On the other hand SCOTUS could simply refuse to hear the case on the grounds that it's a question best handled by the political branches of the government. They're very big on maintaining the fiction that the SCOTUS isn't "political".
Late Tuesday afternoon [ ed. - 24 January 2023 ], Santos’ political operation filed a flurry of amended campaign finance reports, telling the feds, among other things, that a $500,000 loan he gave to his campaign didn’t, in fact, come from his personal funds as he’d previously claimed.
However, while the newly amended filing told us where the funds did not come from, it also raised a new question — where did the money come from?
While both the old and new campaign filings claim that the loans came “from the candidate,” the campaign’s most recent amended filing had ticked the box for “personal funds of the candidate”; on the newly amended filing today, that box is unchecked.
Another amended filing on Tuesday disclosed that a $125,000 “loan from the candidate” in late October also did not come from his “personal funds,” but like the $500,000 question, did not say where the money came from, when the loan was due, or what entity, if any, backed the money.
Italics in original, bolding added by me. So if the money didn't come from Devolder's Santos' personal funds (something long suspected) where did the money come from? The only legal source I can think of would be a bank loan, which would both have a paper trail and likely require a significant amount of collateral. Just about anything else would probably violate campaign finance laws (IANAL).
And now, the person we know as Santos has now stepped away from his committee assignments and has promised from now on to be above board.
The context for this is Republican efforts to remove Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar from their committees. Allegedly this is payback for the removal of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from their committees in 2021 for making violent threats against fellow House members. In reality everyone knows that this is revenge against Schiff for his work on the January 6 Committee, Swalwell for his work on the Intelligence Committee, and Omar for being Ilhan Omar.
In other action, Biden and McCarthy are in talks about the Debt Ceiling. Any bets as to who will win?
In every past example of Congressional Republicans taking the government hostage to extort concessions from a Democratic president the Congressional Republicans have lost badly. (Admittedly in 2011 this was only because House Republicans refused to take "yes" for an answer.)
Yesterday, the House Republicans voted to kick Ihan Omar off the House Foreign Relations Committee. The vote was 218 to 211 with all Republicans voting for the resolution and all Democrats voting against the resolution. The stated reason for removing Ms Omar was because she had made four antisemitic statements over the last four years. She has apologized for those statements, but she remains critical of Israeli influence on America.
Personally, I think it is because she is nonwhite, Nonchristian, nonmale, non-native born, nonrepublican representative that caused the Republicans to vote her off. Good Show, there.
Of course, plenty of Republican politicians have made such remarks.
As I understand it, Omar is a supporter of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanction), and in this she is in plenty of company. For reasons I do not understand, there are American right-wing Christian groups who are ardent supporters of Israel , apparently hoping for war in the Middle East and the rebuilding of the temple. They exert some influence over the Republican party.
I myself favor the B and D but not necessarily the S. On the other hand, I don't offhand know of any country in the world that has an indigenous population and dealt fairly with it.
For reasons I do not understand, there are American right-wing Christian groups who are ardent supporters of Israel , apparently hoping for war in the Middle East and the rebuilding of the temple.
Yes, part of it is that the existence of Israel is seen by them as a necessary item on their apocalypse checklist. They eagerly look forward to the day when Jesus will return so all Jews will convert to Christianity or die horribly. The other reason is that if Israel exists they hope American Jews will move there. For some reason these beliefs are often loudly and proudly cited as reasons why those who hold them can't possibly be anti-Semitic.
Minority Leader Jefferies has now placed Ms Omar on the House Finance Committee. That means all appropriation bills will have to go through her committee. She may have a lot of power to shave off some of the dollars going to Israel.
Anyone watch the State of the Union Speech last night? I think, Sarah Huckabee Sanders had the best line in her rebuttal when she says Americans now have a choice between normal and crazy with crazy wearing a white outfit last night.
Anyone watch the State of the Union Speech last night? I think, Sarah Huckabee Sanders had the best line in her rebuttal when she says Americans now have a choice between normal and crazy with crazy wearing a white outfit last night.
The opposition rebuttal is always a tough speech to give, especially since it's not really a "rebuttal". After all, it's given within half an hour of the end of a two hour speech so it's hard to "rebut" anything from that speech. That said, when the Republicans are giving the rebuttal the results are usually bad, and sometimes career ending, for the one speaking. Past examples include Bobby Jindal (mocked the idea of 'volcano monitoring') and Marco Rubio (so thirsty).
So, McCarthy releases all the January 6th capital surveillance tapes to Tucker Carlson of FOX News, Not good.
Oh. and some Republicans in the House as introduced a bill making the AR-15 the national weapon--much like the bald eagle is our national bird. Double not good.
You know, when I was a kid some 65 years ago, evening TV was dominated by Westerns rife with all the stereotypes: the local madam-cum-tavern-keep with heart of gold; the hero sheriff possessed of wisdom and compassion (doled out solely to true hard-luck cases and never in error to wiley con artists) as well as unerringly-aimed six-shooters; the gangs of marauding outlaws from ElseWhere who invaded, were defeated, and who never prevailed, etc. etc. I often wonder to what extent these model invaded the American subconscious and are, willy-nilly, running things behind the scenes even now.
On the other hand, many children at that time grew up reading the Little House books about life on the frontier and no gunfights at all. At the same time, we had Jack Webb on "Dragnet" and again, no gun battles. I suspect there's a lot more contributing to our problems.
Oh. and some Republicans in the House as introduced a bill making the AR-15 the national weapon--much like the bald eagle is our national bird. Double not good.
“Some Republicans” being Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL), Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and, not to be left out, Rep. George Santos (R-NY).
Moore, the primary sponsor and a member of the Freedom Caucus, voted against giving the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who defended the Capitol and members of Congress during the January 6th insurrection.
Clyde and Boebert are also members of the Freedom Caucus, are election deniers, and were among those who kept voting against Kevin McCarthy in his bid to become Speaker.
And Santos is . . . well, Santos.
The bill (HR 1095) is certainly not a good look, and it explifies the current detachment from reality of much of the GOP. But the chances of it becoming law are zilch. I’ll frankly be a little surprised if it even gets a hearing in committee.
Another Republican freshman congressman caught lying. Andy Ogles of Tennessee claimed he had a degree in economics. All we know about is a level 100 course he took at a community college. He also claimed a degree in international studies. More like a degree in (ahem) Liberal Arts. At best he got a C in American History but he flunked political science. See: https://www.newsweek.com/read-andrew-ogles-college-transcripts-confirm-lies-resume-1784176
AIUI he did pick up some coursework through distance learning.
Great group of freshmen Republicans we have here.
On his campaign website it had
As the adage goes, we have a Republic in America...if we can keep it, but a terrible lack of accountability and transparency in our federal government threatens to destroy it all
When the US constitution was written, a member of the House would have represented around 30.000 people. The size of the House increased every ten years based on the census up until 1929 when a law was passed freezing the size of the House to 435. Now a member of the House represents around 750,000 people with the exception of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming which are guaranteed a member of the House by virtue of being a state.
Has the time come for the House to increase its size? How large could the House become before it gets unwieldy?
I think the House is already unwieldy. The U.S. as a whole may be unwieldy.
I have run into a suggestion that the map of the states should be redrawn, so we could have fewer states and a more equitable distribution of power. (As it stands, states with tiny populations can throw around disproportionate weight in the Senate while being bullied in the House.)
Other people have suggested that in the long run, the U.S. will balkanize into a collection of small countries (California, Deseret, Texas, Dixie, New England, etc).
When the US constitution was written, a member of the House would have represented around 30.000 people. The size of the House increased every ten years based on the census up until 1929 when a law was passed freezing the size of the House to 435. Now a member of the House represents around 750,000 people with the exception of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming which are guaranteed a member of the House by virtue of being a state.
Has the time come for the House to increase its size? How large could the House become before it gets unwieldy?
Increasing the House to somewhere between 850 and 1000 members would give each state at least two Representatives. As for whether this would be unwieldy for a legislative body, the UK House of Commons has 650 members and the German Bundestag has 736 so numbers larger than 435 have been workable in other systems.
When the US constitution was written, a member of the House would have represented around 30.000 people. The size of the House increased every ten years based on the census up until 1929 when a law was passed freezing the size of the House to 435. Now a member of the House represents around 750,000 people with the exception of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming which are guaranteed a member of the House by virtue of being a state.
Has the time come for the House to increase its size? How large could the House become before it gets unwieldy?
Increasing the House to somewhere between 850 and 1000 members would give each state at least two Representatives. As for whether this would be unwieldy for a legislative body, the UK House of Commons has 650 members and the German Bundestag has 736 so numbers larger than 435 have been workable in other systems.
On the other hand the case is frequently made that the number of members of the Commons is too large, and the current Bundestag is abnormally large because of the need for a large number of top-up seats to account for the disparity between seat numbers and vote share. The other oft-quoted fact about legislatures is that the largest two are the House of Lords and the National People's Congress. The former is functional only because most of its members rarely show up, and the latter because its size merely reflects the numbers required to lift the gargantuan rubber stamp it operates. An elected chamber with functioning representatives of that sort of size, particularly in the US system where every representative relies on name recognition to pull in donations and get re-elected every two years, would be an absolute mess. Plus presumably you either have to enlarge the committees, making them more unwieldy, or you have to ration committee assignments, making it even harder for House leaders to manage their caucuses.
An elected chamber with functioning representatives of that sort of size, particularly in the US system where every representative relies on name recognition to pull in donations and get re-elected every two years, would be an absolute mess.
Do most members of the House of Representatives have "name recognition", even within their own districts? I'm not sure that's the case.
Plus presumably you either have to enlarge the committees, making them more unwieldy, or you have to ration committee assignments, making it even harder for House leaders to manage their caucuses.
I'd argue that committee assignments are already "rationed", insofar as House members can't just request an unlimited number of committee assignments. There are already a finite number of seats and access is controlled by House leadership.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was being treated Thursday for a concussion and is expected to remain in the hospital for “a few days” after he tripped and fell at a hotel dinner the night before, his spokesman said.
The Kentucky senator, 81, was at a Wednesday evening dinner after a reception for the Senate Leadership Fund, a campaign committee aligned with him, when he tripped and fell. The events were at the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC, formerly the Trump International Hotel.
Spokesman David Popp said McConnell is being treated for a concussion and “is grateful to the medical professionals for their care and to his colleagues for their warm wishes.” McConnell’s office did not provide additional detail on his condition or how long he may be absent from the Senate.
Comments
Indeed. Is there no equivalent to the pairing system that operates here, NZ, Canada and the UK. If for some reason, such as bereavement or medical treatment, a parliamentarian is unable to attend, a member of the other side is also temporarily absent. They are said to be paired.
To the degree such a system still exists it's more common in the Senate than the House. The Senate has always considered itself the more genteel of the chambers. The House is where the wild things are.
Recent DOD directives indicate if a congressman or senator is on active duty for more than 270 days, they must resign from the congress.
Representative Adam Kizinger deployed to the Southern Border with his Air National Guard was called up for duty. I believe the deployment was for 90 days, though. That was in 2019.
In the US, it was never formally part of either chamber's rules, and when it occurred it usually was an informal agreement between two members of the same party on opposite sides of a vote, because as we have seen there can be considerable division within our parties (although pairing has on occasion happened with members of opposite parties).
The complicating factor in the Speaker's election is that it's not a simple binary vote. There are multiple possible options/candidates, particularly this year. "Pairing" a McCarthy supporter with a Jeffries supporter would do nothing other than amplify the not!McCarthy faction's share of the vote.
The latest seems to be that Anthony Devolder George Santos allegedly stole $3,000 from his fake pet "charity" that was intended to fund cancer surgery for a homeless veteran's service dog. The dog later died. "Santos" later said that such accusations were "shocking and insane", which is both actually true and not really a denial.
Devolder Zabrovsky Santos has also been found to have performed in drag shows, which he of course denied. (There are photos and video.)
Guess which of these accusations more upsetting to his Republican compatriots.
Question is, where did he get his money?
Either nothing or a global financial crisis. Nobody has, as I understand it, been quite able to predict which. It may be that, when push comes to shove, the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional.
Not so. There are lots of people who making predictions. There just isn't any general agreement on what is predicted.
Quite likely. The debt ceiling was enacted for idiosyncratic reasons during the First World War and has remained on the books ever since. As far as I know no other country has an equivalent law. It certainly runs afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment's stricture that "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." It also puts the president in a bind since he's obligated to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" (Art. II, §3) and the spending that's bumping up against the debt ceiling was duly passed into law by Congress. The problem is that the dubious constitutionality of the debt ceiling would take time to resolve, during which the U.S. would miss a bunch of payments which would cause the aforementioned global financial crisis.
Part of the problem with deciding the constitutionality of the debt ceiling restrictions is you have a conservative SCOTUS. Would they uphold the law, or affirm the constitution?
No, the real question is which law the current SCOTUS would uphold. There are two competing laws here. There's appropriations made by Congress (which are a matter of law) stating that certain spending must happen, and there's the debt ceiling, which says the U.S. cannot have more than $X of debt on its books. Since the spending laws passed by Congress would lead to breaking the debt ceiling law passed by Congress you have a case where the SCOTUS would have to decide which law takes precedence. Given the Constitutional background of the Fourteenth Amendment (see above) I'd favor the appropriations over the debt ceiling, but I'm not a Supreme Court Justice.
If I were placing a bet I'd guess the Roberts court would rule against the debt ceiling. They're very pro-business and crashing the economy is fairly anti-business.
A sort-of update on that question:
Italics in original, bolding added by me. So if the money didn't come from Devolder's Santos' personal funds (something long suspected) where did the money come from? The only legal source I can think of would be a bank loan, which would both have a paper trail and likely require a significant amount of collateral. Just about anything else would probably violate campaign finance laws (IANAL).
Ya, sure.
In other action, Biden and McCarthy are in talks about the Debt Ceiling. Any bets as to who will win?
The context for this is Republican efforts to remove Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar from their committees. Allegedly this is payback for the removal of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from their committees in 2021 for making violent threats against fellow House members. In reality everyone knows that this is revenge against Schiff for his work on the January 6 Committee, Swalwell for his work on the Intelligence Committee, and Omar for being Ilhan Omar.
In every past example of Congressional Republicans taking the government hostage to extort concessions from a Democratic president the Congressional Republicans have lost badly. (Admittedly in 2011 this was only because House Republicans refused to take "yes" for an answer.)
Personally, I think it is because she is nonwhite, Nonchristian, nonmale, non-native born, nonrepublican representative that caused the Republicans to vote her off. Good Show, there.
As I understand it, Omar is a supporter of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanction), and in this she is in plenty of company. For reasons I do not understand, there are American right-wing Christian groups who are ardent supporters of Israel , apparently hoping for war in the Middle East and the rebuilding of the temple. They exert some influence over the Republican party.
I myself favor the B and D but not necessarily the S. On the other hand, I don't offhand know of any country in the world that has an indigenous population and dealt fairly with it.
Yes, part of it is that the existence of Israel is seen by them as a necessary item on their apocalypse checklist. They eagerly look forward to the day when Jesus will return so all Jews will convert to Christianity or die horribly. The other reason is that if Israel exists they hope American Jews will move there. For some reason these beliefs are often loudly and proudly cited as reasons why those who hold them can't possibly be anti-Semitic.
Minority Leader Jefferies has now placed Ms Omar on the House Finance Committee. That means all appropriation bills will have to go through her committee. She may have a lot of power to shave off some of the dollars going to Israel.
The opposition rebuttal is always a tough speech to give, especially since it's not really a "rebuttal". After all, it's given within half an hour of the end of a two hour speech so it's hard to "rebut" anything from that speech. That said, when the Republicans are giving the rebuttal the results are usually bad, and sometimes career ending, for the one speaking. Past examples include Bobby Jindal (mocked the idea of 'volcano monitoring') and Marco Rubio (so thirsty).
Oh. and some Republicans in the House as introduced a bill making the AR-15 the national weapon--much like the bald eagle is our national bird. Double not good.
Moore, the primary sponsor and a member of the Freedom Caucus, voted against giving the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who defended the Capitol and members of Congress during the January 6th insurrection.
Clyde and Boebert are also members of the Freedom Caucus, are election deniers, and were among those who kept voting against Kevin McCarthy in his bid to become Speaker.
And Santos is . . . well, Santos.
The bill (HR 1095) is certainly not a good look, and it explifies the current detachment from reality of much of the GOP. But the chances of it becoming law are zilch. I’ll frankly be a little surprised if it even gets a hearing in committee.
Get it in three national publications. Get news papers using it. Expand to general conversation. Vola, entry into OED, perhaps.
AIUI he did pick up some coursework through distance learning.
Great group of freshmen Republicans we have here.
On his campaign website it had
Couldn't agree more.
When the US constitution was written, a member of the House would have represented around 30.000 people. The size of the House increased every ten years based on the census up until 1929 when a law was passed freezing the size of the House to 435. Now a member of the House represents around 750,000 people with the exception of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming which are guaranteed a member of the House by virtue of being a state.
Has the time come for the House to increase its size? How large could the House become before it gets unwieldy?
I have run into a suggestion that the map of the states should be redrawn, so we could have fewer states and a more equitable distribution of power. (As it stands, states with tiny populations can throw around disproportionate weight in the Senate while being bullied in the House.)
Other people have suggested that in the long run, the U.S. will balkanize into a collection of small countries (California, Deseret, Texas, Dixie, New England, etc).
Increasing the House to somewhere between 850 and 1000 members would give each state at least two Representatives. As for whether this would be unwieldy for a legislative body, the UK House of Commons has 650 members and the German Bundestag has 736 so numbers larger than 435 have been workable in other systems.
On the other hand the case is frequently made that the number of members of the Commons is too large, and the current Bundestag is abnormally large because of the need for a large number of top-up seats to account for the disparity between seat numbers and vote share. The other oft-quoted fact about legislatures is that the largest two are the House of Lords and the National People's Congress. The former is functional only because most of its members rarely show up, and the latter because its size merely reflects the numbers required to lift the gargantuan rubber stamp it operates. An elected chamber with functioning representatives of that sort of size, particularly in the US system where every representative relies on name recognition to pull in donations and get re-elected every two years, would be an absolute mess. Plus presumably you either have to enlarge the committees, making them more unwieldy, or you have to ration committee assignments, making it even harder for House leaders to manage their caucuses.
Do most members of the House of Representatives have "name recognition", even within their own districts? I'm not sure that's the case.
I'd argue that committee assignments are already "rationed", insofar as House members can't just request an unlimited number of committee assignments. There are already a finite number of seats and access is controlled by House leadership.