Rep. Cori Bush, Missouri Democrat, said she is bringing a congressional resolution in support of reparations for slavery, arguing that federal action is needed to address the $14 trillion “Black-White wealth gap.”
The measure, dubbed “Reparations Now,” is intended to boost H.R. 40, sponsored by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas Democrat, to form a federal commission to study and develop reparations proposals for Black Americans.
“When the Black-White wealth gap is $14 trillion, it’s unjust and it wouldn’t happen in a just and fair and equitable society,” said Ms. Bush at a Wednesday press conference. “Those are not the natural consequences of human society, none of that. They are directly caused by our federal government’s role in the enslavement and exploitation of Africans or Black people throughout our history.”
Those backing Ms. Bush’s resolution included Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Democrat, another member of the far-left “squad” of House Democrats, who gave the Biden administration a nudge.
“Reparations is necessary towards really true equity,” said Ms. Tlaib. “We hear the Biden administration and so many others talk about that word ‘equity.’ They need to make sure that reparations is part of the movement towards equitable distribution of resources.”
Bills to form reparations commissions have been introduced in Congress every session since 1989, but the issue has drawn renewed attention this year with task forces in California and San Francisco floating proposals for hundreds of billions to compensate Black residents for the harms of slavery.
The San Francisco panel’s draft recommendation includes $5 million per eligible resident, which would cost an estimated $175 billion. The city’s annual budget is about $14 billion.
The California reparations task force’s myriad proposals have an estimated price tag of $800 billion, or more than 2.5 times the size of the annual state budget. The final report is due June 30 to the state legislature, but Gov. Gavin Newsom has already put a damper on the idea of writing checks.
“Dealing with the legacy of slavery is about much more than cash payments,” he said in a statement last week. “Many of the recommendations put forward by the Task Force are critical action items we’ve already been hard at work addressing.”
Critics have argued that race-based reparations are likely unconstitutional and that “past discrimination does not explain present-day disparities in wealth or income,” said civil-rights lawyer Hans Bader in a May 7 op-ed.
Reparations naysayers also contend that the nation paid the price for slavery with the Civil War and initiatives such as the $22 trillion War on Poverty.
Ms. Bush said the federal government “never saw fit on its own to rectify the immeasurable, the cataclysmic harms of slavery.”
“But we’re here now, and we’re lifting up this mirror of a resolution so that America can face it and see, look in it and see our future, a future of healing, a future of repair, a future of accountability,” she said. “We’re not here to request that future. We’re here to demand it, We need that future now. Reparations now.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.