Bowing to robust lobbying by U.S. governors, members of Congress appear poised to repeal a law enacted just a year ago that expanded the president’s power to invoke martial law.

Both the House and Senate have passed defense authorization bills (HR 1585) that would undo the provision in a law (PL 109-364) that augmented the circumstances in which the president may use the military, even without governors’ consent, to enforce the law at home during crises. A House-Senate conference is writing the bill’s final version, and the provision is unlikely to change.

The National Governors Association also is concerned about a proposal in the House-passed version of the bill that would require new procedures for the control of National Guard and active-duty troops during domestic emergencies.

But the more significant issue for governors is restoration of the traditional limits on presidential power in times of crisis.

“The current law is a dangerous consolidation of power in the presidency,” said Mark Udall, D-Colo., a House Armed Services member, in a statement.

Udall, who wrote the provision that would repeal the 2006 law, said the proposed change “restores this control of the Guard to the governors who, with their local law enforcement and emergency response officials, know their communities and are best able to respond to catastrophic events.”

Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., said in a statement: “After we passed last year’s bill, the governors and others expressed concern about the possible implications of the change. After looking into those concerns, the committee felt we should return to the original law.”

The original law, in place for nearly 200 years, was called the Insurrection Act. It allowed the president to deploy regular or Guard troops for police duties whenever laws were not being enforced or the rights of a class of people are being denied because of “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”

The 2006 revision describes basically the same state of chaos that might trigger the presidential power. But the circumstances that lead to the unrest are more numerous. They include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident or other condition.”

Critics — including the co-chairmen of the Senate National Guard Caucus, Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., and Christopher S. Bond, R-Mo. — said the new law shifted the burden of legal proof onto anyone who would stand in the way of a president grabbing control of the military for domestic police activities.

Many in the 110th’s Democratic majority felt the change was an excessive shift of power from the states to the White House.

“A lot of what the previous Congress did under the Republicans went too far,” said Ellen O. Tauscher, a California Democrat and a member of the Armed Services panel. “This was a perfect example.”

The Bush administration had sought the increased authority, saying the confusion over state vs. federal control of the military during Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided with a clearer statute, although the National Guard commander, Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, testified in April that the new law would not have helped the response to that crisis.

In preparing to overturn last year’s law, members are rebuffing the White House.

The administration issued statements on both the House and Senate bills saying the pending changes to the Insurrection Act “would be detrimental to the president’s ability to employ the armed forces effectively to respond to the major public emergencies contemplated by the statute.”

However, the White House did not threaten a veto over the issue.

The governors association opposed the 2006 change and in 2007 have fought to undo it. They were joined by National Guard groups, including the Adjutants General Association of the United States and the National Guard Association of the United States.

The two governors in charge of a year-long lobbying campaign — North Carolina’s Michael F. Easley, a Democrat, and South Carolina’s Mark Sanford, a Republican — wrote to members in both chambers. There were phone calls and visits to congressional offices. In an Oct. 16 letter, the two governors thanked the leaders of the Armed Services Committees for their actions.

Meanwhile, the governors are now concerned about a new proposal that would affect control of Guard units in domestic disasters.

Part of the House-passed defense authorization bill, it would require the secretary of Defense to come up with procedures for controlling units that comprise both active and Guard forces. The procedures must enable the forces to be controlled by either the commander of the Colorado-based Northern Command or state National Guard officials. The Senate version contains no such provision.

The provision has drawn fire from both governors and the White House, although for different reasons.

“This is an egregious intrusion upon the sovereignty and prerogatives of state governments and should be stricken,” the governors wrote to the heads of the Armed Services Committees in their Oct. 16 letter. “If there are situations under which the Northcom commander needs to gain command over National Guard forces, there are existing legal mechanisms for such forces to be called or ordered to active duty.”

The White House objects because the provision also could put state officials in charge of federal troops, raising “significant constitutional issues.”