On September 11, 2001, a fourth plane headed for the U.S. Capitol was only prevented from reaching its target by the brave actions of its passengers. If an attack on Congress had killed or incapacitated many members of Congress, the result would have been no Congress at all or a ineffectual, unrepresentative Congress in the important months after 9/11 when the country was responding to the attack. In 2003, the AEI-Brookings Continuity of Government Commission released its first report, Preserving Our Institutions: The Continuity of Congress, which made recommendations to enable Congress to reconstitute itself in the event of a catastrophic attack. But in the eight years since 9/11 and the six years since the issuance of the report, only cosmetic changes have been made, and the continuity of Congress after a terrorist attack is still in doubt.

Almost eight years after the 9/11 attacks, the Continuity of Government Commission's cochairmen, Alan Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming, and David Pryor, former Democratic senator from Arkansas, will discuss the continuity of Congress, the lack of progress we have made in addressing it, and where we might go from here. Norman J. Ornstein, a senior counselor to the Commission, will introduce and moderate a panel with Senators Simpson and Pryor, the commission's senior counselor Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, and its executive director John C. Fortier of AEI.