Nothing Like Keeping Your Priorities Straight

On Friday, The Independent Journal Review reported that House Democrats are working on passing a bill to create a plan for reparations for slavery in time to be passed during the Biden administration.

The article reports:

House Democrats say they are ready to take the next step to force through a bill that would study how reparations for slavery will take shape, but want to hurry to assure passage of any plan can be implemented by the Biden administration.

“This has been a 30-plus year journey,” Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas said in reference to her efforts to have reparations approved, according to The Washington Post. “We had to take a different approach. We had to go one by one to members explaining this does not generate a check.”

But it would cost $12 million of taxpayer dollars, for starters.

And under H.R. 40, the bill House Democrats think they can force through with their razor-thin House majority, the bill would form a commission to which Republicans need not apply to determine how reparations would be structured.

The make-up of the commission is noted in the article:

And under H.R. 40, the bill House Democrats think they can force through with their razor-thin House majority, the bill would form a commission to which Republicans need not apply to determine how reparations would be structured.

The panel would have 13 members, one each appointed by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one by Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont as president pro tempore of the Senate, and six from civil rights groups that support reparations.

The article explains the ‘justification’ for reparations in the current time:

Jade Magnus Ogunnaike, a senior campaign director at Color of Change, said the commission will rebut the effort of opponents of Critical Race Theory.

“At the heart of what the critical race theory fight is about is the refusal to educate young people and by proxy their families about the harm America has done to Black people,” she said. “And so you have people asking: ‘Why should a Black person today receive reparations, none of you experienced slavery?’ And this is why I think H.R. 40 is so, so important because it’s going to explain and show the ways that slavery, the Jim Crow era and Reconstruction materially impacted Black communities and their legacies.”

Ogunnaike said the racial wealth gap will vanish once reparations are passed.

“There are so many White families who may not be wealthy, but they have a home that they inherited from their grandparents who bought the home with federal funds when they returned from World War II,” Ogunnaike said. “So few Black people have that ability, and that’s a direct harm at the hands of the federal government. It’s time for them to repair it. Black organizers, the Black movement has done an incredible job of making this a centerpiece of conversation, now we need to figure out the how of how we move people to action.”

Is anyone in Congress actually interested in addressing the actual problems America is currently facing–inflation, energy independence, high gas prices, rising crime, etc.?