The House will stay at 435 as legislation to add seats falls short in the Senate, the Associated Press reports:
A bill that would have given District of Columbia residents their first-ever member of Congress died in the Senate on Tuesday, dashing hopes of finally gaining full voting rights after a 206-year wait.
Senators voted 57-42, just three votes short of the 60 needed to move the measure forward. The bill would have created two new House seats: One for the city of about 600,000 people and one for Utah, which narrowly missed out on a fourth seat after the last census.
Read the rest at the link above. The Utah seat was poisoned bait, offering a presumably safe Republican seat in exchange for an absolutely guaranteed Democratic one in DC. Utah missed an extra district by a fraction in the 2002 reapportionment, but they will likely gain it anyway after the 2010 census – at the expense of one of the other 435, in all probability continuing the long-term trend towards the Sun Belt.
The crumbs from the King’s table will have to suffice to feed the parasitic District a little longer. Given the size of the subsidies those “crumbs” represent, poor DC won’t be losing any weight.
