Phyllis Schlafly
Surprising Assault On Democracy
Wed Jun 18 03:30:41 2003
208.152.73.91

Surprising Assault On Democracy
June 18, 2003 by: Phyllis Schlafly

Press and television channels have been filled for months about
America's responsibility to bring democracy to Iraq and other faraway
nations that have no prior experience with self-government. So why
are some of the same people now trying to abolish the most
democratic feature of our constitutional republic, namely, the right of
the people to elect the U.S. House of Representatives?
An elite group of former Clinton advisers and former public officials of
both political parties gathered last week at the American Enterprise
Institute in Washington to announce their proposal to convert the
House of Representatives from an elected body to an appointed body
in the event of a national emergency. I'm not making this up; this
crowd has set 9/11 of this year as its target date to pass a
constitutional amendment to accomplish this goal.

This group calls itself the Continuity of Government (COG)
Commission, and the acronym is apt. The COG Commission is
trying to be a cog that manipulates our constitutional process of
self-government.

COG offers a "solution" in search of a hypothetical problem that
doesn't exist and may never exist. COG hypothesizes that it would
be a second disaster if, after a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol
killed most members of Congress, we then had to wait several
months for special elections to fill the House vacancies.
It should not be high on our worry list that the House couldn't pass
bills until special elections are held. Almost every year Congress
goes about four months without passing anything significant.
COG proposes a constitutional amendment that would allow House
members to be appointed, a procedure that is now unconstitutional.
After painting an emotional picture of a worst-case scenario with
most members of Congress killed, COG is hoping that Americans'
fear of a recurrence of the events of 9/11 will bamboozle Congress
into precipitous action, and H.Con.Res. 190 to study COG's
proposals passed the House on June 5.
COG draws a dramatic word picture of what might have happened if
United Flight 93 had departed on time and hit the U.S. Capitol
instead of being forced down in Pennsylvania. In fact, only a handful
of congressmen were in the Capitol that morning.
One of COG's proposals would simply give Congress plenary power
to fill vacant seats "if a substantial number of members are killed or
incapacitated." Another alternative would empower each governor to
replace his state's dead or disabled House members (e.g., Governor
Gray Davis could appoint 53 Representatives from California).

The text of COG's proposed constitutional amendment contains far
more words than the entire ten amendments of the Bill of Rights and
is a Rube Goldberg-like plan (i.e., complex and impractical). COG
would require each House and Senate member to designate in
advance three to seven successors to fill his seat if it becomes
vacant, and the governor would appoint Representatives from among
those so designated.

Each House and Senate member would be empowered to "revise the
designations" of his successors at any time. Thus, in the 2004
elections, voters would be given the task of electing a congressional
candidate to whom is attached several shadows who would fade in
and out of the possibility of serving in Congress and whose actual
appointment would depend on the governor's choice.
Each governor's "appointment authority" would kick in after a majority
of governors issued a proclamation that an "emergency" exists
because a majority of the Representatives in that state are dead or
"unable to discharge" their duties. The process gets even stickier if
the disabled Representative rises from his sick bed and tries to
resume the office to which he was legitimately elected.
James Madison did a better job of writing the Constitution than COG,
whose members include Donna Shalala, Lynn Martin, Kweisi Mfume,
Tom Foley and Newt Gingrich. Our present Constitution already
allows governors to fill U.S Senate vacancies and allows states to
advance their timetables for special House elections.

COG's co-chairman is Lloyd Cutler, confidant of Presidents Carter
and Clinton, who was also co-chairman of the 1983 Committee on
the Constitutional System that tried (fortunately unsuccessfully) to
change the U.S. Constitution in a dozen ways in order to eliminate
our Separation of Powers. A co-sponsor of COG is the Brookings
Institution, whose president Strobe Talbott (Clinton's foreign policy
adviser) famously wrote in Time Magazine that "nationhood as we
know it will be obsolete" and that he rejoiced in the coming "birth of
the Global Nation."

The United States survived the real national emergencies of the Civil
War and the burning the U.S. Capitol by the British in 1814 without
giving up our right to elect members of the U.S. House of
Representatives. We should never relinquish that right.
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Read this Column online:
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2003/june03/03-06-18.shtml
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need to know but didn't know how to ask. Order your copy now at:
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• already trashed the constitution.. — Vincent Germano, Wed Jun 18 12:30
• Court OKs secret imprisonments — Richard B. Schmitt, Wed Jun 18 03:43