[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 2]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 2616]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    A NOTE ON PROCESS REGARDING THE CONTINUITY IN REPRESENTATION ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                    HON. F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR.

                              of wisconsin

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 16, 2005

  Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, on February 28, 2002, the House 
Subcommittee on the Constitution held a legislative hearing on H.J. 
Res. 67, Representative Brian Baird's proposed constitutional amendment 
to allow lawmaking by an appointed House of Representatives following a 
terrorist attack.
  During the 107th Congress, a bipartisan working group co-chaired by 
then-House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Christopher Cox and 
House Democratic Policy Chairman Martin Frost, met regularly to discuss 
the issues surrounding continuity in government, including 
constitutional amendments. As a result of those working group meetings, 
the House passed H. Res. 559 during the 107th Congress, expressing the 
sense of the House that each State should examine its existing 
procedures governing special elections so that, in the event of a 
catastrophe, vacancies in the House could be filled in a timely 
fashion. Unfortunately, only one State, California, responded to that 
request. Consequently, the House responded precisely as the Founders 
would have expected the House to respond, namely by acting pursuant to 
Congress's authority under the Constitution to ensure that the House is 
repopulated expeditiously through elections in extraordinary 
circumstances. To that end, H.R. 2844, the Continuity in Representation 
Act, was introduced in the 108th Congress. The bill received a hearing 
before the House Administration Committee on September 24, 2003, and it 
was marked up by both the House Administration (on November 19, 2003) 
and House Judiciary Committees (January 21, 2004). Amendments adopted 
on the House floor included one that would protect the rights of 
military and overseas voters to participate in the expedited elections, 
and a provision that provided explicitly that all Federal laws 
governing the administration of Federal elections would apply.
  Because H.R. 2844 was a bipartisan bill that resonates best with 
America's democratic values, on April 22, 2004, it passed the House on 
an overwhelming bipartisan basis by a more than 3-to-1 margin, by a 
vote of 306-97.
  As part of a bipartisan agreement, I agreed to a markup of 
Representative Baird's proposed constitutional amendment (H.J. Res. 83 
in the 108th Congress) in the Judiciary Committee. That was done on May 
5, 2004. Committee members all had the opportunity to offer amendments 
to H.J. Res. 83 to either perfect its language or replace it entirely 
with the text of any other version of the amendment. During the markup, 
I asked if there were any Members who wanted to offer amendment more 
than half a dozen times. The Judiciary Committee adversely reported out 
H.J. Res. 83, so all Members could have an opportunity to vote on it on 
the House floor.
  The constitutional amendment the House voted on was the approach 
supported by Representative Brian Baird, the Member who is widely 
regarded as the most outspoken House proponent of appointed Members. 
This proposal and a host of others have been extensively studied by 
scholars both inside and outside of Congress, including during the last 
Congress, and by previous Congresses, going back some 50 years. It 
remains a terrible idea because it would introduce into our Founding 
document, for the first time, the concept that laws can be written by 
an unelected aristocracy. That is a bad idea now, and it was a bad idea 
then, when the House of Representatives, controlled by both Democrats 
and Republicans, rejected all constitutional amendments authorizing 
appointed House Members sent to it by the Senate, even during the 
height of the cold war.
  The conclusion of the Continuity in Government Commission's (a 
privately-funded commission's) report recommending a constitutional 
amendment that would deny the right to self-government under laws 
enacted by elected representatives states that ``The exact details of a 
solution are less important than that the problem be addressed 
seriously and expeditiously.'' (This is from page 31 of the re-
port, which can be found at http://www.continuityofgovernment.org/
report/report.html.)
  On June 2, 2004, the House voted on H.J. Res. 83 and generally on the 
question of whether Americans should be governed by laws passed by an 
unelected aristocracy. There are only two ways to go on the issue: 
either you support an appointed House--the ``details,'' by the 
Continuity in Government Commission's own admission, are relatively 
unimportant--or you support preserving lawmaking by an elected House. 
Representative Baird, the author of H.J. Res. 83, said of a 
constitutional amendment--quote--``The more urgent matter is to put 
that measure before the body.'' On June 2, 2004, that measure was put 
before the House, and the House overwhelmingly rejected it by a vote of 
63-353, a margin of over 5-1. That margin of defeat of a constitutional 
amendment is historically large.
  The right to self-government under laws passed by the People's chosen 
representatives has endured since America's birth, through two World 
Wars, a Civil War, a cold war, and now a war against terrorism. The 
terrorists would like nothing more than to make us rewrite our 
Constitution to reflect their twisted vision of autocratic rule. The 
Continuity in Representation Act rejects that terrorist vision and 
would preserve the right to elected representation.

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