WASHINGTON --Legislation introduced this month by Senate Republicans, including Texan John Cornyn, would dramatically change the way presidential succession works.
Should the president become incapacitated along with the vice president, members of Congress would be ineligible for the top leadership position in favor of Cabinet members.
"We really didn't have a workable plan if the terrorist attacks of 9/11 had been successful and the heroic passengers had not stopped that plane in Pennsylvania (that the FBI has said was aimed at Washington)," Cornyn said. "We began looking at exactly what would happen, and the more we scratched away, the more problems we saw."
At this time, if a president and vice president were killed, the speaker of the House would become president. Next in line would be the president pro tem of the Senate, a senior member of the majority party.
Cornyn and other lawmakers, along with a number of scholars and researchers, think the law is outdated and may be unconstitutional.
The bill he introduced with Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi would remove members of Congress from the line of succession. Instead, Cabinet members, beginning with the secretary of state and followed by the treasury secretary, defense secretary, attorney general and the homeland security director, would form the line behind the president and vice president.
Part of the argument against the current law is that the country could be left with a president who holds views far different from those of the person elected by the American people. For example, the Reagan-Bush administration would have been replaced by liberal Democratic House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, and the Clinton-Gore team by conservative Republican Newt Gingrich.
But some scholars challenge the idea of taking Congress out of the line of succession.
"Cutting all elected officials out of the loop (if the president and vice president were dead or incapacitated) is somewhat disturbing," said Paul Brace, a political scientist at Rice University. "The leaders in Congress are sensitized to the demands of running a democracy. With Cabinet members, you have had people of wildly varying capabilities over the years."
Other scholars say the language in the Constitution should keep the powers of the branches of government separate -- keeping Congress out of the loop.
The bill would clear up the constitutional questions, said John Fortier, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.
"Having congressional leaders in the line of succession poses a lot of problems," Fortier said. "Is it a good idea to have the kind of radical policy shift you could have had during some periods if the speaker from one party replaced the leader of the rival party?"
The Lott-Cornyn bill has had a low profile on Capitol Hill so far. The leading Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, has not taken a formal position on the bill.
The line of succession was last altered by Congress in 1947 during President Truman's administration. In the 19th century, Congress first placed members of Congress in the line, then took them out.
Under the bill, the Cabinet member who becomes president would hold the job until the next scheduled election or until a disabled president or vice president recovers. If a Cabinet member becomes president temporarily while a president recovers from an incapacitating condition, the Cabinet member would not have to resign the Cabinet post, as present law requires.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., has not taken a position on the legislation.
Fortier is part of a private commission that, soon after 9/11, began looking at how power might be passed in orderly fashion in case of a Washington cataclysm. The panel is headed by Lloyd Cutler, a former counsel to Democratic presidents Carter and Clinton, and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming. Two former House speakers, Democrat Tom Foley and Republican Newt Gingrich, served on the commission and support its findings.
In the early 1980s, Reagan officials set up an elaborate plan that would have established continuity of government in case of disaster. People such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then a business executive, and Vice President Dick Cheney, then a congressman, were listed among dozens of experienced leaders who would disperse to secret locations outside Washington to ride out catastrophe.
After Sept. 11, 2001, it became even clearer that some of the issues of who would govern after a deadly attack, and how power would be transferred, needed to be addressed in legislation, Fortier said.
Last fall, Cornyn introduced another bill that followed recommendations of the Cutler-Simpson commission on how Congress could be reconstituted in case of an attack on the Capitol building that killed scores of lawmakers.
Under that bill, states could choose a method to fill the seats. Those temporary lawmakers would hold office until elections could be held within 120 days.