Melvin Watt: “Mr. Chairman, the Chair of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Canady), would have us believe that this is…”

“Mr. Chairman, the Chair of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Canady), would have us believe that this is a technical amendment. It is not. It is a very substantive amendment, and we should be aware of that. The chairman of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Canady), would have us believe that the Committee on Armed Services waived jurisdiction over this bill because it thought it was an uncontroversial bill. The truth of the matter is that there is a whole section of this bill which has never, ever, been debated in any committee of this House. The bill came to the Committee on the Judiciary. We had a debate on a part of the bill that was under the Committee on the Judiciary's jurisdiction. We exercised our rights to debate that part. We tried to offer amendments to the part of the bill that was under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Armed Services. We were denied that right in the Committee on the Judiciary on the parliamentary ruling that we did not have jurisdiction over that part of the bill. Now, on the floor of the House, after the Committee on Armed Services has decided not to take jurisdiction over the bill and consider amendments in the committee, we are here on the floor of the House making major substantive changes to this bill.”