While fiercely resisting the Trump administration’s work to eliminate government waste, fraud and abuse, Democrats have found their own cause to rally around.
A group of congressional Democrats led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have reintroduced legislation that seeks to use taxpayer dollars to pay reparations to black Americans who are descendants of slaves, Fox News reported.
“We are in a moment of anti-Blackness on steroids and we refuse to be silent,” said Pressley, a member of the far-left “Squad,” during a news conference Wednesday. “We will not back down in our pursuit of racial justice.”
Booker’s office released a statement on the reparations bill, which has 17 Senate Democrat cosponsors, last month.
“We as a nation have not yet truly acknowledged and grappled with the ways slavery, racism, and white supremacy continue to disadvantage African Americans,” Booker said in a statement. “Commissioning a study to better understand where our country has fallen short will help lawmakers better address the racial disparities and inequalities that persist today as a result of generational injustices.”
H.R.40, or the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, aims to “create a commission to study the impact of slavery and develop ways to deliver reparations to African Americans who are descendants of slaves.”
Democrat Rep. Summer Lee (D-Penn.) said during the presser Wednesday that every presidential administration has “an obligation” to provide reparations to black people “to eliminate the racial wealth gap.” Lee argued that “white supremacy is rampant in this country. Just look at the current administration and our own legislative body.”
The Democrat went on to accuse Republicans of contributing to the “social and economic harms and racial terror black folks have experienced in this country.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill and in blue states like California have pushed reparations in recent years with little success.
In August, a pair of reparations-related bills for the descendants of enslaved Black Americans failed to pass in the California legislature after backers said the bills would not move forward and were at risk of being vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Although the the idea of forcing reparations on people for a nation’s past injustices is deeply unpopular with the American people, Democrats are not giving up.
“Now more than ever we must acknowledge and repair those harms,” said Lee.
Yeah, keep pushing this kind of crap; I’m sure it will work this time.