[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 30, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1718-H1723]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address a matter that we 
would all

[[Page H1719]]

prefer to hope we never have to address, but that after September 11 we 
must address. I would ask my colleagues and friends to imagine the 
unimaginable. Imagine that the American people are going about their 
daily business while Congress is meeting in full session here in the 
House and the Senate is doing its business and suddenly the national 
news wires, television and radio are interrupted. They are interrupted 
by an announcement that a nuclear weapon has been detonated without 
warning in the Nation's Capital. The Capitol has been destroyed. The 
White House has been obliterated. It is evident that in all likelihood 
all Members of the House and Senate have perished, that the 
administration, the President and Vice President and most members at 
least of the Cabinet have been killed, that the Supreme Court has 
likely been killed along with thousands of our fellow citizens and 
government workers. At that moment, we must have an answer to the 
American people of what happens next, and at this moment we do not have 
an answer to that question.
  It has now been 2\1/2\ years since September 11. On that fateful day, 
not only did we see live on television as thousands of our fellow 
citizens were killed in an horrific manner, but what we did not know 
was that a fourth plane was coming here in an attempt to kill everyone 
in this building and that were it not for the heroism of the passengers 
on that flight and fortunate circumstances that delayed it by a few 
moments, many of us would likely have perished.
  The question then arises, what would happen in this event? We know 
that it is possible. We know that our adversaries seek nuclear weapons. 
We know that our adversaries seek chemical and biological weapons. And 
we know that in this era it is very possible, indeed probable, that one 
day they may obtain such weapons. Yet, Mr. Speaker and my friends, we 
have not prepared for congressional succession, and there are grave 
problems with the Presidential succession law.
  Let me walk you through, if I may, a scenario of what might happen. 
First let me start with the Constitution. Under the Constitution of the 
United States, a quorum to do business is made up of a majority of the 
Members. House rules stipulate that a quorum is made of the majority 
chosen and sworn and living. Let us suppose that three Members of the 
Congress are on a trip abroad and while they are overseas, they witness 
this horrific event. Everyone else in this body has been killed. The 
President and the Vice President are dead. America is in crisis to say 
the least.
  Those three Members under current House rules could declare 
themselves a functioning House of Representatives. They could elect one 
of the three the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Under current 
succession law, the third in line to the Presidency is the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives. Let us suppose further that those three 
are from a party other than the current President. What we now have is 
a situation where three surviving Members of a catastrophe, randomly 
chosen more or less by events, have now become the entire House of 
Representatives, have chosen one of their own Members Speaker and that 
person has acceded to the role of Presidency.
  We now also have a situation where under our system of checks and 
balances, the article 1 provisions of the Constitution, declaration of 
war, approval of spending and taxation, and a host of other issues that 
are the rightful jurisdiction of this body and the Senate working 
together are presumably going to be carried out by two or three 
surviving Members, if there are survivors; or we would have a President 
who could say that because there is no Congress, the President is 
declaring extra-constitutional powers, conceivably taking our Nation 
into war without a vote of the Congress, conceivably imposing martial 
law, conceivably spending hundreds of billions of dollars and doing a 
host of other events with no representation from the people of the 
States as a check and balance on that person.
  And who might that person be? If it is not the Speaker of the House 
or the President pro tem of the Senate, it would most likely be a 
Cabinet member, assuming a survivor. I think we need to be frank. 
Cabinet members were never elected to their post. They were approved by 
the Senate, but they were not elected; and we need to be more frank 
still. Most Americans have not a clue, once you get past a couple of 
the top Cabinet members, just who they are. So if one of the lower 
Secretaries emerges on TV and says, I am now the President of the 
United States. Because there is no functioning Congress, I have 
authority to take this country into war, would the American people give 
that legitimacy? I do not think so. Would the Founders have given that 
legitimacy? I doubt that still further.

  We must face this problem, and we must face it before the time comes. 
Because when that happens, should it happen, the very institutions 
charged with crafting a solution will have been destroyed in the very 
event that demands a solution. And who will be left? The American 
people will be left wondering who is their Representative in Congress. 
How does our constitutional system of government function? The world 
will be left wondering who now has control over nuclear weapons and on 
what checks and balances can we rely that that person will conduct 
themselves responsibly?
  One of my good friends and colleagues has actually looked at this 
matter extensively, the matter of Presidential succession. The 
gentleman from California has offered a resolution that I think would 
address this, and I would encourage our colleagues to bring this up for 
a vote at some point soon, certainly before we need it. I would ask my 
friend from California to describe his resolution and some of the 
challenges it would address.
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. SHERMAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his 
dedication to the importance of assuring the continuity of our 
government.
  We here in Washington have erected these concrete barriers, blocking 
this road, blocking Pennsylvania Avenue, all to assure the survival of 
our physical embodiment of our government. We must make sure that we 
have done just as much to protect the identity of those who will make 
the decisions. Our laws should be as strong as our concrete barriers. 
In the post-September 11 world, that which was just thought to be a 
distant possibility must now be something that we plan for. The line of 
Presidential succession determines who becomes President after the 
President and the Vice President if they are both permanently or 
temporarily unable to carry out their duties.
  We can change this without amending the Constitution. It is the 1947 
Presidential Succession Act which currently governs. In fact, going 
back to the statute that existed before 1947 would be a substantial 
step in the right direction and would deal with many of the problems 
that I will identify here tonight. Not only is this an issue that we 
can solve without amending our Constitution, it is one that is 
critically important to solve for two reasons.
  First, as important as Congress is, and I am proud to serve in this 
body, in the days following a catastrophic attack, knowing the identity 
of the Commander in Chief will be perhaps the most important legal 
issue to deal with that crisis. And, second, while it would take a 
nuclear bomb, perhaps, to destroy a majority of the Members of the 
House or the Members of the Senate, it does not take anywhere near such 
a catastrophe to have the President and the Vice President not able to 
serve. In fact, John Wilkes Booth came within an inch of doing it in 
1865, and he did not have any nuclear weapons. Yes, he killed President 
Lincoln. He also tried to kill the Secretary of State and the Vice 
President of the United States. Those other assassination attempts 
failed. So muskets or hand revolvers have been sufficient to bring us 
close to a position where we would move through the line of succession.
  What is that line of succession now? Right after the Vice President 
is the Speaker of this House. That creates a few problems, illustrated 
in a ``West Wing'' scenario. It was as if ``West Wing'' had focused on 
the bill that I introduced to this Congress very early in 2001. In that 
scenario, you had no Vice President serving, the Speaker of the House 
was of another political party, and the President was only temporarily 
incapacitated. What happened on

[[Page H1720]]

television was not quite believable to those of us who live in the 
politically charged atmosphere here in Washington. The President 
temporarily gave up the Presidency to a person of another political 
party, voluntarily and under a circumstance where he would have 
legitimately continued to retain the Presidency, but he thought that 
the kidnapping of his daughter in this scenario made him too 
preoccupied to serve. What about the real Washington? Would a President 
whose family circumstance makes it difficult or impossible to continue 
to serve temporarily give up the White House to somebody of the 
opposite philosophy? One can only imagine the aides coming and saying, 
Mr. President, don't do it. There will be 500 pieces of legislation 
signed into law within the first hour of your incapacity.

                              {time}  1900

  In addition, under this scenario, the Speaker agreed to assume the 
presidency, had to resign his seat in the Congress, served as President 
for only a day or two, and then left public service. Would every 
Speaker of this House be willing to resign their seat in Congress for 
an hour or two or a day or two in the White House? And if not, what 
does that do to our system?
  The answer is that we must maintain a system in which the philosophy 
that governs in the White House is the same throughout a 4-year term in 
office. This is important for a number of reasons. First, let us say 
the office of Vice President was vacant. Our friends wonder whether a 
heart attack or an assassination could suddenly change the direction of 
America. The stock markets wonder whether all economic policy could 
change with one ill-fated bad effect on one man or woman's health. Not 
a good situation. We should have continuity of philosophy in the White 
House throughout the 4-year term.
  Not only that, it encourages assassins. Imagine either a group of 
fanatics or an individual lunatic believing they could justify their 
act because they were not just killing an individual man or woman, they 
were radically changing the philosophy that governed here in 
Washington.
  Who is fourth in line? Fourth in line is the President pro tempore of 
the Senate. Yes, that means Mr. Strom Thurmond. An individual who 
served this country quite long as a United States Senator in his 98th 
year was third in line to serve as President of the United States. 
Could al Qaeda come up with a better plan than the death of three 
individuals vesting the presidency in a man who at that time had seen 
better days? I think that in a world of suicide assassins, we are 
negligent in our duties if we do not revisit the 1947 Presidential 
Succession Act.
  There will be those who say we have muddled along so far without 
having to worry about this. Clearly, the events of 9/11 illustrate that 
we have to protect ourselves not just from what has happened but from 
that which might happen.
  There are a number of possible solutions. I put before this House, in 
I believe it was February of 2001, a bill which I reintroduced in the 
current Congress that would provide two things: First, it would deal 
with one final problem I have not had a chance to identify here and a 
problem that is also substantial. That is a current law not only goes 
through a list of those who would succeed to the presidency that causes 
the problems I have outlined but is also unclear particularly in the 
circumstance in which someone succeeds to the presidency because they 
were third, fourth, or fifth on the list and then someone else is 
confirmed or elected to be second on the list. What happens if there is 
no Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore succeeds to the 
presidency and then this body meets and elects a Speaker? Do we bump 
the person who succeeded only because they held that less-high-in-line 
position? That is something we need to clarify in our statutes.
  So I presented a bill that solved that problem and identified that, 
once somebody became President, they stayed as President through the 
end of that term, and also identified that the second in line to serve 
would be either the Speaker or the minority leader, whichever was 
designated by the President, and whoever would serve after that would 
be either the majority or the minority leader of the other body. What 
this would assure under this scenario is that whoever succeeded to the 
presidency would have been elected by their State or district and 
selected by their colleagues for a position of national leadership, not 
as the President pro tempore is for a position of ceremonial honor.
  Another solution, a simpler one, is to simply take Congress out of 
it, have the line of succession go through the Cabinet.
  A final idea put forward by Norm Ornstein, a scholar who has studied 
in this area, is to create a list of several governors selected by the 
elected President to be in line of succession and have them become 
Federal officers by giving them a ceremonial position perhaps as head 
of their own National Guards so that they could be in line.
  As the gentleman from Washington pointed out, it may be that we do 
not want the line of succession to go all through the Cabinet even to 
Cabinet officers not well known by the American people so a hybrid 
solution would be that the line of succession would go through the top 
five or six Cabinet officers and then to a list of five governors 
selected and ranked in a document filed with the House and the Senate 
by the then serving and inaugurated President.
  So there are several ways to solve this constellation of problems. 
There is one thing that it is simply criminally negligent for us to do, 
and that is to ignore the problem until it happens. To do so invites 
assassination. To do so invites people around the world to wonder 
whether there will be a sudden shift in policy or whether the United 
States will be temporarily unable to respond because the identity of 
its President cannot be determined with a legitimacy that is accepted 
by all the American people.
  It is time for us to act on the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 
and to adopt the amendments or a change of it this year.
  I thank the gentleman for his great generosity in yielding to me.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, could I ask my colleague a question if I may? 
There is a recent book out, I think, called The Vulcans, and we have 
read over the last couple of decades of plans for shadow governments, 
shadow administrations. I do not recall reading in the Constitution of 
the United States that the executive branch is empowered to create a 
shadow government. I do not recall reading it. I do recall, correctly I 
believe, that the Congress is empowered to provide through statutory 
language mechanisms to replace the President and the Vice President 
should those two seats be vacant.
  In the gentleman's estimation and thought, as he has spent a great 
deal of time, which does he think would have more legitimacy with the 
American public, a public process enshrined in statute, debated 
thoroughly by the House and Senate and passed into law that gives a 
clear cut, unambiguous line of succession for who will be President and 
Vice President or a shadow government created covertly and operating 
covertly to run the institutions of this country without a Congress to 
exercise oversight?
  Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, clearly, the gentleman from Washington will 
not be surprised if I say that a clear and transparent system for 
installing a successor President would be preferable.
  There are some plans to deal with top-level civil servants in the 
bureaucracy and to see if this civil servant is unavailable, that civil 
servant would do his or her job. But all of this must take place under 
a legitimate President, and the fact that our present statute has all 
the problems I have outlined, from ambiguity to lack of continuity of 
policy, creates a circumstance where we could have a careful scenario 
as to which bureaucrats are running what and no scenario as to who is 
overseeing the whole group.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for his 
remarks. Have there been hearings yet on the gentleman's legislation?
  Mr. SHERMAN. No. As I said, I introduced it in February or May of 
2001 in part because I was analyzing how our institutions could be 
improved in light of the difficulties of December, 2000, and I was not 
surprised that I was not able to get a hearing then. But in the months 
after September 11 when we

[[Page H1721]]

have been so concerned about what terrorists could do to our country, I 
am frankly flabbergasted that the House Committee on the Judiciary has 
not considered amending the 1947 Presidential Succession Act.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, let me make one other observation that I find 
admirable on the gentleman's part. He and I are from the minority 
party. We are both Democrats. Everyone knows the administration is from 
the Republican side of the aisle. The gentleman's resolution assures 
that the President would stay in the hands of the Republican Party if 
he were to perish, at least the presidency would. So the gentleman is 
actually stepping up to the plate and saying he is ensuring that the 
President's Party would stay in power if the resolution were to pass 
and that circumstances could not create a scenario whereby, through 
catastrophe or assassination, the power of the presidency could shift 
parties. Is that accurate?
  Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, that is not only accurate, but it was more 
accurate when I initially introduced the legislation. I introduced the 
legislation in early 2001. I expected the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. 
Gephardt) to become Speaker after the 2002 election; and I could just 
imagine how secure the undisclosed location where Vice President Cheney 
resided would be if the person coming after him in the line of 
succession was the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), our good 
friend and colleague. So, yes, I introduced legislation which would 
have vested the presidency, had the catastrophe occurred, in a member 
of the party selected by the President of the United States, even if we 
Democrats had been in the majority in 2003 and 2004.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I respect that, because one of my principles 
about this whole debate has been that it should not be a partisan 
issue. The continuity of our government is not a Republican issue. It 
is not a Democratic issue. It is an issue for all Americans; and, 
indeed, it impacts the entire world. It is admirable that the gentleman 
has created a mechanism in his proposal that is nonpartisan in the 
sense that it would allow whichever party has been elected to the 
presidency to maintain that role in the executive branch even under 
times of catastrophe, and I think that is admirable.
  Is there anything else the gentleman would like to add before I move 
on to discuss congressional continuity?
  Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I just want to commend the gentleman for 
his work on congressional continuity, and I know that the Committee on 
the Judiciary may focus on congressional continuity first. I hope they 
focus on both these issues as soon as possible.
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for his 
remarks.
  I should emphasize that we are by no means the only people who are 
working on this issue. Admirable and outstanding work, I think, was 
done by a working group within the Congress for a time period. That 
committee was chaired by the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) and 
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost), who I think did yeomen's work. In 
addition, a number of other people participated.
  Other resolutions providing for continuity of the Congress, who are 
for a remote Congress should unique circumstances arise, have also been 
introduced. The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) has a proposal 
for an amendment to the Constitution to provide for continuity. The 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren) does as well; and the 
gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), a former Secretary of State 
from Rhode Island, has proposed a way we could have a remote Congress 
in extraordinary circumstances such as a threat or an outbreak of 
infection. All of those folks have done an outstanding job of 
presenting options, and we ought to be able to discuss them.
  I would also commend to my colleagues I think an outstanding service 
to our country. The Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise 
Institution formed a bipartisan group of distinguished scholars headed 
by Lloyd Cutler and Alan Simpson, two statesmen if ever there were 
people to whom that title would fit, and filled in by scholars and 
former Members of the Congress, legal scholars, constitutional experts. 
I would commend my colleagues to their work. It is available at 
Continuityofgovernment.Org, and I would encourage my colleagues to 
study this work. It reviews the history of continuity issues. It 
reviews how special elections can be held. It outlines in careful 
detail the problems that would arise were an attack to occur, and I 
think it is, again, a service to our country.

                              {time}  1915

  One of the things that emerges from this document is that after close 
to a year of deliberation, that distinguished committee reached one 
conclusion, and the conclusion was something they resisted. The 
conclusion was that we cannot solve adequately the question of 
continuity of the House of Representatives without a constitutional 
amendment.
  I would underscore this fact. Not one member who served on that 
commission, and, again, it was a bipartisan commission, not one member 
began their service thinking that they wanted to amend the Constitution 
even to address something of this magnitude. But they all agreed after 
studying the matter that, regrettably, in order to provide real 
continuity, we must amend that magnificent document. No one races into 
that, no one sets out to amend the Constitution lightly, but we must 
have continuity of this government.
  Let me walk through, if I may, a few of the issues that could arise 
that have not yet been addressed. I talked a little bit about what 
constitutes a quorum. Remember that our government is bicameral, our 
legislative branch. We have a House and a Senate. The framers wanted 
the various regions of our States to have their own representatives. 
And it is absolutely true that no one in this body has ever served who 
was not elected. We hold that very dear to our hearts. Some have said 
under no circumstances should we deviate from that.
  But here is the problem. The Constitution says that if vacancies 
occur in the House of Representatives, executives of the States shall 
issue writs of election. Under normal circumstances, where you have 
lost one or two Members and have 430 or 434 to continue the people's 
business, it is not a problem. But when you have two surviving Members, 
or no surviving Members, you are left without a House of 
Representatives until you can have an election.
  How long does it take to have an election? We have spent a great deal 
of study and time on this. If you talk to various people who are 
experts in this field, different numbers emerge. But the critical point 
is this: even the fastest number you can come up with, until that time 
can be completed, you are without a House of Representatives.
  Frankly, most people with whom I have spoken who are experts and 
scholars in this field have suggested that a minimal probable length of 
time would be about 3 months. From the time of catastrophe in order to 
have real and meaningful elections, would be about 3 months. Anything 
less than that poses extraordinary logistical challenges and poses some 
real constitutional challenges potentially.
  Some have proposed, and I disagree with this proposal, but some have 
proposed that we mandate elections within 45 days of a catastrophic 
loss of Members.
  Let me be clear about something: everyone agrees who studied this 
issue that we want to maintain the tradition of special elections for 
permanent replacement of Members. But this Continuity of Government 
Commission and myself and many other scholars have said we are gravely 
concerned about a 45-day period with no House of Representatives, 
because how do the article I of the Constitution functions get carried 
out without a House of Representatives? Who carries those out? Who 
assumes those?
  Yes, it is true that no one has ever served in the House of 
Representatives that was not elected. But it is also true our country 
has never functioned without a House of Representatives. It has never 
functioned under an executive branch alone.
  Some have said if there were a catastrophe, the survivors would do 
the right thing. There is an assumption of survivors, first of all, 
which there may well not be. But, beyond that, the reason the framers 
created checks and balances is they were gravely concerned

[[Page H1722]]

about vesting too much power in the hands of an individual without 
checks and balances. They rebelled against such a system. The 
revolution was all about overthrowing an unelected monarchy who 
functioned without effective checks and balances.
  To assume that a survivor who assumes the executive branch would do 
the right thing and that we do not need a Congress for up to 45 days 
strikes me as a direct insult to the fundamental insights of the people 
who wrote our Constitution, even if you could have a 45-day election. 
But how would we get to 45 days under the proposals that have been 
offered?
  Well, the Congress, which has constitutional authority to do so, 
would tell the States you cannot have a primary election because there 
is not time. Instead, the major political parties will select the 
candidates, thereby disenfranchising all the voters from choosing the 
candidates in the primary and thereby prohibiting most people who could 
run for office from standing for candidacy.
  What is more, in an expedited election of this sort, Americans living 
overseas, including very likely the very young men and women who would 
be dispatched to try to defend our country, could well be 
disenfranchised because there was not the time to get them the votes 
and get them ballots.
  So the proposals that we could have a mandated 45-day election leave 
our country with no functioning Congress for 45 days, and I should say 
as long as 75 days if it is proximal to a pending regular election; no 
House of Representatives, no article I functions; further, they mandate 
that the States allow the parties to select the candidates, when our 
dear Constitution has never once mentioned the word ``party'' in its 
entire history. They disenfranchise independents from standing for 
office, they disenfranchise overseas voters.
  And there are still more problems. Under this 45-day mandate, what 
happens if one State manages to conduct its election in 30 days, and if 
newly elected Members arrive at Congress and they are the first ones 
here and say there is nobody else here, we declare ourselves a 
functioning House of Representatives, and elected one of our Members 
Speaker of the House, who, by the way, under some circumstances could 
thereby become the President?
  Two days later yet another State, somewhat larger this time, gets its 
elections completed, and they arrive at the House of Representatives, 
and their Members are sworn in. They say we have more Members now. 
Someone from our State will be the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives. And so it goes, until at last everyone is here. Is 
that what we need at a time of the greatest crisis in our Nation's 
entire history, that sort of ambiguity? I submit that it is not.
  There is a further problem. If we pass a law that says all States 
must conduct elections in 45 days, what happens if this institution is 
struck by a nuclear weapon and some State capitals are taken out 
simultaneously? Al Qaeda targeted four different sites on September 11.
  If they target Washington, D.C., New York City, and Sacramento, 
California, do the people of New York, do we really expect them to 
conduct a special election within 45 days after New York City has been 
hit by a nuclear weapon? Do we expect California to do so after its 
capital has been destroyed? Or do we just pretend that could not happen 
and hope for the best? I think we have learned in the last few weeks 
that hoping for the best does not work, that we have to prepare.
  There is an alternative, and it is an alternative I reached with 
great contemplation and with great study by some of the most 
distinguished scholars I could speak with, and here it is:
  It is that we must find a way to temporarily, and I emphasize 
temporarily, reinstate this House of Representatives as quickly as 
possible in order that the people's business can be conducted, that we 
have checks and balances, that we have proportionate representation, 
that it is not just an executive or, even worse, a shadow government 
running our country.
  To do that will, regrettably, require a constitutional amendment, but 
it is not something that will sound extraordinary when I explain it. It 
is this: the people have elected us as their representatives to make 
decisions as profound as taking our Nation into war, as taxation and a 
host of other issues described in article I of the Constitution.
  If upon our election, we generate a list of potential successors who 
could only assume our position if we are killed or incapacitated, and 
only if that death or incapacitation happens in the course of a 
catastrophic event, and only for the circumstance that it is 
temporary until a special election can be held, we would be able, 
within a week of a catastrophic event, to reinstate the entire House of 
Representatives and restore our functioning constitutional government.

  Let me give you my own State as an example. In Washington State, if 
we were to create a list of potential successors who would take our 
place only in catastrophic circumstances, not in the normal course of 
events, that list could include former Speaker of the House of 
Representatives Tom Foley. It could include, on the Republican side, 
Slade Gorton, a man for whom I have the utmost respect. It could 
include, on the Democratic side, people such as Don Bonker, Al Swift, 
our Governor, Gary Locke. It could include on the Republican side 
former Governor and former U.S. Senator Dan Evans, Sid Morrison, former 
U.S. Representative and former Secretary of Transportation. These are 
distinguished individuals.
  And here is the choice, my friends. If that horrific day happens and 
if that announcement comes on television, we must have the media know 
what to tell the American people, and they can either say for the next 
45 days a shadow government will run this country with no checks and 
balances and no representation from you, the people; or they can say 
your representatives in their best judgment have created a list of 
statesmen and stateswomen who will temporarily fill their seats until 
you can have real special elections.
  Then, instead of confusion and chaos and hasty disenfranchising 
elections, we would have a functioning Congress made up of 
distinguished statesmen and stateswomen who would take care of this 
country, who would do the right thing. And I would warrant that many of 
those people would not even stand for reelection or for new election. 
They would instead serve until the election could be held, and hand the 
country back to the newly elected people.
  What I most ask is that we have an opportunity to debate this. It is 
2\1/2\ years now since September 11. I began to work on this the night 
of September 11. I began to talk to the leadership of this body within 
a week of that time. And I have asked, pleaded, negotiated and 
discussed; and we still have not had serious consideration by this 
body.
  On September 10, 2001 thousands of our fellow citizens had no idea 
that the next day when they kissed their families and went off to work, 
when they fixed their breakfast cereal, when they rode the elevators to 
their office or walked from the parking lot of the Pentagon in, they 
had no idea that they would be dead at the end of that day.
  We do not know in this body if on any given day it is the morning of 
September 11, or if it is September 10 and the next day we will all 
perish. We do not know that. But we have to assume that there are 
people in the world who would dearly like to bring that about.
  We do know that the weapons of mass destruction are out there. We 
know that a nuclear scientist from Pakistan essentially had an Amway-
like system to help develop nuclear weapons internationally. We know 
the fissionable material is available in abundance, and we also know 
that if someone uses it, we are ill-prepared to address the outcome.
  I have offered a rule for debate. The rule seeks to achieve fairness. 
What it does is it invites not only my proposal, but proposals by other 
Members of this Congress to resolve this issue, to be brought up before 
the entire body for discussion.
  It says essentially, if you have a better way to do it, we are all 
ears. Let us hear it. Bring it up for debate. We will debate a series 
of potential solutions. Whichever one gets the most votes will become 
the new base bill. We will then take several days for contemplation, 
much the way the framers themselves would bring an issue up for 
discussion and then either recess for several days for contemplation or 
invite a subcommittee to review it further.

[[Page H1723]]

  We would take several days for contemplation, because this is a 
matter of the utmost seriousness. Then we would bring that base bill 
which had received the most votes back with an opportunity for 
amendment, and then we would proceed to a final vote.
  I would hope we could get the necessary two-thirds on that process, 
and I would hope it for this reason: that if we do not find some 
solution, be it mine or someone wiser than me, we leave this country 
subject to chaos and constitutional ambiguity and unelected shadow 
governments, which I think would mortify the people who wrote that 
magnificent document, and I think would mortify most Americans, should 
that event occur.

                              {time}  1930

  So I will ask my colleagues to consider the resolution that I have 
put forward. It is H.J. Res. 83. I think it is rather simple, as most 
constitutional amendments should be. I think it is reasonable. It 
should be a bipartisan effort.
  If one is not compelled by H.J. Res. 83 and one thinks there are 
better ways, I welcome the discussion. Look, please, then at House 
Resolution 572. House Resolution 572 says we will have a debate and the 
rules for debate will be open. There will not be a committee chairman 
saying, only my amendment or my proposal is allowed. It will be the 
House of Representatives reviewing several alternatives, having the 
discussion, and trying to resolve this most grave of problems.
  The entire Constitution was written in one hot summer in 
Philadelphia, several months. We have been 2\1/2\ years since September 
11 and we have been unwilling, not unable, but unwilling to address 
this change.
  There are people of good intention who I respect profoundly on the 
other side, but what I do not respect is the refusal to let other 
people of good intention engage in this debate. I find it profoundly 
ironic and troubling that those who assert that they oppose these 
amendments that I have offered and that others have offered is because 
they respect the sanctity of the vote, which I respect as well. Again, 
no one is proposing a substitute for direct election, for permanent 
replacement of Members. We are talking about temporary replacement. But 
they have said it is so sacrosanct, this principle of direct election, 
that we cannot even consider any alternative. And ironically, in 
defending the principle that one must be elected in order to serve in 
this body, they have at the same time said the people who have been 
elected to serve in this body are not entitled to debate this most 
serious of issues.
  So we have been sent here by our constituents. They have entrusted us 
with the most profound of responsibilities; and yet some individuals in 
this body have said they will not entrust us with the responsibility to 
ensure the continuity of this very institution and to ensure that 
constitutional measures will exist in a time of catastrophe.
  Please, I say to my colleagues, I beseech my colleagues, bring this 
issue up for a vote and for true debate. Let us not play partisan 
politics; let us not assume that one committee chair or 2 committee 
chairs have greater wisdom than this body. That assumption flies in the 
face of the principles of Madison and the rest of the Framers. Let us 
assume that the collective good intentions and intellect and 
scholarship of this body can craft a solution that will ensure the 
continuity of this institution that we all so cherish and will ensure 
that if that horrific day ever happens and we perish, we will perish 
knowing that our Nation will be left in good hands, rather than in 
confusion.

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