Nice to know they aren't taking care of anything....
Philadelphia Inquirer
October 28, 2003
Panel: Leaders Are Ill-Prepared For Catastrophe
By Jim Abrams, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress has done little to prepare for another calamity that could leave it paralyzed, a panel of experts said yesterday.
The Continuity of Government Commission was particularly critical of House leaders who oppose a constitutional amendment to remedy the succession issue.
"It's sobering that we went up to and past the second anniversary of Sept. 11 without making any significant progress" on the succession issue, said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The commission was started after the 2001 attacks to study congressional and presidential succession in case of a catastrophe that kills or incapacitates senior members of government.
The commission, headed by former Sen. Alan Simpson (R., Wyo.) and former presidential adviser Lloyd Cutler, has backed the approval of a constitutional amendment allowing governors to appoint members of Congress in an emergency.
Governors already appoint senators when vacancies arise before an election, but House members must be replaced by a special election.
Mann said the constitutional amendment had won some support in the Senate but had met resistance in the House.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) and Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R., Calif.) prefer quick elections of new members over gubernatorial appointments. Appointments would erode the House's status as a fully elected body, they said.
"I am concerned that beneath its plain-brown wrapper lies the constitutional equivalent of a computer 'virus' or 'worm,' " Dreier said at a recent hearing on the issue. Dreier and Sensenbrenner have proposed that elections be held within 21 days in the event that 100 or more House members are killed.
A constitutional amendment, Sensenbrenner said at a hearing, "would accomplish what no terrorist could, namely striking a fatal blow to what has otherwise always been 'the People's house.' "
Mann said special elections could take months to stage, and said state and local officials had told him that "you can't force an election like this, when the nation is in trauma, in an extraordinarily short time."
The commission is also taking up the issue of presidential succession, with focus on the constitutionality and wisdom of the current system, in which the House speaker and the Senate president pro tempore are next in line if the president and the vice president are killed or incapacitated.
The commission is a joint project of the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Philadelphia Inquirer
October 28, 2003
Panel: Leaders Are Ill-Prepared For Catastrophe
By Jim Abrams, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress has done little to prepare for another calamity that could leave it paralyzed, a panel of experts said yesterday.
The Continuity of Government Commission was particularly critical of House leaders who oppose a constitutional amendment to remedy the succession issue.
"It's sobering that we went up to and past the second anniversary of Sept. 11 without making any significant progress" on the succession issue, said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The commission was started after the 2001 attacks to study congressional and presidential succession in case of a catastrophe that kills or incapacitates senior members of government.
The commission, headed by former Sen. Alan Simpson (R., Wyo.) and former presidential adviser Lloyd Cutler, has backed the approval of a constitutional amendment allowing governors to appoint members of Congress in an emergency.
Governors already appoint senators when vacancies arise before an election, but House members must be replaced by a special election.
Mann said the constitutional amendment had won some support in the Senate but had met resistance in the House.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) and Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R., Calif.) prefer quick elections of new members over gubernatorial appointments. Appointments would erode the House's status as a fully elected body, they said.
"I am concerned that beneath its plain-brown wrapper lies the constitutional equivalent of a computer 'virus' or 'worm,' " Dreier said at a recent hearing on the issue. Dreier and Sensenbrenner have proposed that elections be held within 21 days in the event that 100 or more House members are killed.
A constitutional amendment, Sensenbrenner said at a hearing, "would accomplish what no terrorist could, namely striking a fatal blow to what has otherwise always been 'the People's house.' "
Mann said special elections could take months to stage, and said state and local officials had told him that "you can't force an election like this, when the nation is in trauma, in an extraordinarily short time."
The commission is also taking up the issue of presidential succession, with focus on the constitutionality and wisdom of the current system, in which the House speaker and the Senate president pro tempore are next in line if the president and the vice president are killed or incapacitated.
The commission is a joint project of the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
