Nope. The succession order was designed NOT to institute a pecking order in congress, to maintain federalism in the executive side. I thought the succession order was designed to replace the executive, so it was chosen (with the exception of the speaker and pro tem) to work through cabinet members, who were appointed by the executive, and thus share whatever mandate or philosophy they were elected under. The order of the cabinet positions was designed to address the most important needs of the country in such a situation...at least that's how it appears to me:
Speaker--as the majority selected leader of the "people's house" the speaker is the closest thing we have to a PM, so his/her position immediately after the pres and "backup pres" is obvious
Pro-tem--wasn't the succession order codified before direct election of senators? Regardless, the next closest thing we have to a PM after the speaker
The cabinet positions then are backups to the backups, in keeping with thoughts above:
State--maintaining our international relations and stability of diplomacy to prevent looking vulnerable with the loss of an executive
Treasury--det that has the most insight into all domestic activities, economic stability is key
Defense--obvious, see state
AG--domestic oversight is substantial, and rule of law extremely important
Interior--??? Yeah, I don't get this one
Agriculture--throwback to when it was codified
Commerce--see treasury
Labor through HUD--WTF
Energy--true to previous point, but while DOE controls the devices, delivery is defense. DOE is safeguards and maint.
Education and VA--just filling out the list...if you got this far, we are fracked anyway
DHS--last because the new guy is the "pledge" in this fraternity
Given modern concerns, I would make it:
POTUS
VPOTUS
Speaker
Pro-tem
State
Defense
Treasury
AG
Commerce
Namely because I believe DHS and VA should be part of defense (splitting VA away reflects the adversarial union-management construct that was required, but I don't believe is needed any more); Ed, energy, HHS, and HUD should be eliminated; interior, agriculture, transportation and labor should be minimized and rolled up into commerce.
Basically, the commerce related parts of HHS, HUD, energy, agriculture, and labor should be part of commerce--to allow for elimination of redundancy and better coordination. All the defense related parts should be rolled up under defense--DOE weapons, VA, DHS. All the law enforcement is under AG, and should be.
The problem is we have too many departments that have redundant functions and thus waste.
What if (continuing my thread jack) we did the above, the budget would have the following categories:
Defense
Diplomacy (including international commerce)
Law enforcement
Treasury
Commerce (internal commerce)
Execution of all entitlements would then fall under commerce.
I think this would allow joe citizen to see what the priorities of the country were:
$ in defense--concerned with international security and our interest from a military perspective
$ in diplomacy--the carrot, but with a single budget encapsulating all international non-military relations--think the foreign side of the Japanese MITI
$ in law enforcement--obvious
$ in treasury--should be minimal budget
$ in commerce--all domestic spending
As a strict constitutionalist/libertarian, this gives us the best breakdown--the top three are specific constitutional powers, and thus, provided (wishful thinking, as is all of this) we actually took a fine-tooth comb to "regulate interstate commerce" and "provide for the common welfare" all the targets would be in a single part of the budget--commerce and that department could be held responsible to public opinion--too much entitlements, not enough infrastructure--refine commerce budget.
Combine with a real BBA, limiting emergency spending to ONLY the first three (with supermajority requirements for deficit spending in those line items--after all, if it is a real emergency, convincing 2/3rds of congress to vote for it shouldn't be hard), and one could see that fiscal progress could be made.
Education, HHS, HUD, etc should be state issues, allowing states to compete without federal interference.
Anyway, just a random Sunday morning rant...apologies for errors, omissions, or lack of deep thoughts, still waking up.
