Melvin Watt: “Mr. Chairman, before we rush to judgment on this, I think we ought to at least let our colleagues and the American…”

“Mr. Chairman, before we rush to judgment on this, I think we ought to at least let our colleagues and the American people know what we are doing here. In the spirit, whether it is bipartisanship or whatever, the American people deserve the right to know that we are saying, out of one side of our mouth, that we should be staying out of the States' business and we have now set upon a series of amendments that inject the Federal Government further and further and further into the business that has typically been the reserve of the State. I will say to my colleagues that the Federal Government has no juvenile law. We do not deal with juveniles in the Federal system. We do not have laws in Federal system that deal with juvenile delinquency. Most States have a whole system that they have put in place over years and years and years to deal with juvenile delinquents.”