Melvin Watt: “Number two, it quite often puts us in a position of thinking, well, this legislation is not serious and it is not going…”

“Number two, it quite often puts us in a position of thinking, well, this legislation is not serious and it is not going anywhere anyway, and as happened with the legislation that has been referred to on several occasions here, well, the United States Senate, the more deliberative body, will bail us out and save us from ourselves. I think that is a dangerous slippery slope that our committee has gotten on, and I wish there was some way to pull us back from that so that we would in our committee anticipate, have hearings, and deal with the kind of serious problem that has been identified by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) here; and it would not be just a question of whether the sponsor of the bill thinks that this does not apply or may not apply. Maybe under those circumstances the committee and its members would look at what this stuff really says, the bill, look at the drafting of the bill. That is part of our responsibility as legislators, and it is even more a part of our responsibility as members of the Committee on the Judiciary; and I fear that we have failed in that responsibility.”