Melvin Watt: “Mr. Chairman, I have followed my colleagues' debate about this, particularly my colleague on the Democratic side, the…”

“Mr. Chairman, I have followed my colleagues' debate about this, particularly my colleague on the Democratic side, the gentleman from Virginia, who says that there are no substantive changes in this bill, there are only procedural changes, and that this is a modest change. The thing that is amazing about that is the modest change is going to move a tremendous volume of cases from the State court to the Federal courts, which is exactly why the Federal judges are opposed to this. If this is only procedural in nature, I am not sure that I, for the life of me, can understand why we are doing it. If this is only process, it would seem to me that we should be able to get the same result in the Federal court or the State court, because if we listen to what the supporters of this bill are saying, they are not making any substantive changes. Now, I used to think that I understood my Republican colleagues when they said that they believed in States' rights, and that when we have the level of government or a judicial system that is close to the people, that is where we are likely to get the best kinds of results in cases. Why, then, if we follow that theory, would we take all of the cases that are now being tried in State court and pick them up and move them into Federal court? For some reason, there is something wrong with that picture.”