mr. chairman , i rise in support of this legislation and commend my chairman for the good job that he has done , but i am opposed to one portion of the bill . 
the baird/rohrabacher amendment , which we will debate in a few moments , will remove title iii from this appropriations bill . 
title iii not only should not be in this appropriations bill ; it should not become law no matter how it is brought up . 
title iii is a statutory plan that has been rejected by the united states senate because it will not work . 
it will not work because it was intended to ensure not the continuity of congress but , as it turned out , it was intended and it is intended by what you can see and what it does to ensure the continuity of the election process , which are two different items . 
the task force that got together to try to come up with a solution to this challenge of what we are going to do in case of a catastrophe where many of our people are killed or incapacitated became confused about what they were supposed to be doing . 
the idea is not to ensure the election process , but to ensure that this congress can act in a time of emergency . 
instead , what we have gotten as our alternative , which is in title iii of this bill , will put us in grave jeopardy for 7 weeks after a national catastrophe . 
i am pleading with my republican friends to please open their eyes and not let the ego of the people on this task force who put together this and now will not look at any other alternative get in the way of watching out for the people of the united states . 
if al qaeda or any other enemy of our country manages to create a situation or explode a bomb or murder or incapacitate large numbers of our people , we can not wait for 7 weeks of a special election in order to deal with that . 
what we have been offered is a plan that will lead to martial law at exactly the time when we need congress functioning to represent the interests of the american people . 
i am pleading with my republicans to please not blindly follow along with a task force that got its working orders confused with what they were trying to do . 
please think about what will happen if we have another major bombing in this country and it happens in this city . 
let us not incapacitate congress from working for 7 weeks , which is what title iii does . 
title iii would say that we have to wait for special elections for up to 7 weeks . 
this is outrageous . 
there is an alternative . 
the baird/rohrabacher constitutional alternative changes the rules . 
the alternative to what we have been offered by this task force which , as i say , lost their way on this is that we should change the way we do things so that we can cope with the challenge of this type of threat to our society , that is , we will run , we will select an alternate to run with us , the voters will vote for a team of people so that if we are incapacitated or murdered , the alternate can take that seat right away and congress will not cease to function for 7 weeks . 
that person is elected , just like the vice president of the united states is elected and will take over for the president of the united states . 
no one claims that the presidency would not be elected if the vice president takes over . 
we have to get rid of these cliches . 
we have got to get rid of these blocks on thinking what will happen . 
put ourselves in a position of what will happen in a catastrophe . 
waiting 7 weeks for special elections , as presented in this bill , would be a disaster . 
