A California State Assembly has approved an $800 billion reparations bill that is worth 2.5x more than the state’s annual budget.
The bill is based on a recommendation from the state’s infamous Reparations Task Force that first convened in 2020.
The bill specifically calls for paying up to $360,000 to every eligible black resident in California at a cost of at least $800 billion total.
The bill originally passed the California State Senate last month but made it into the Assembly Judiciary Committee this week.
Only one committee member — state Rep. Kate Sanchez — raised concerns about the bill.
Listen:
BREAKING NEWS: A key committee just approved a #CALeg bill to help distribute reparations that could total $800 billion. I was the ONLY member to raise concerns.
Why should CA taxpayers foot the bill when none of us had anything to do with this? Ridiculous! pic.twitter.com/D7g9trVoPo
— Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez (@AsmKateSanchez) June 11, 2024
“Economists, consultants from the task force reported the total amount could be as much as $800 billion,” she said in the clip. “That’s two and a half times the size of our entire state budget. To pay for that, you’d need a major tax hike unlike anything this state has ever seen before. I recognize and acknowledge the painful part of our history. The pains of our past should not be paid by the people of today.”
“The majority of our state is Latino and Asian, making up 55 percent of our population. Most of them, like me, are second, first, or third generation immigrants who had nothing to do with slavery, discrimination, Jim Crow laws. It is fundamentally unfair to force these people to pay for this, and because of that, I will be opposing today,” she added.
Responding to the proposal, the public for their part echoed Sanchez’s concerns.
Look:
California is broke and digging a deep deficit hole. Just where do they think this money is going to come from? Another tax increase?
— Janine Clark (@DixieChick0211) June 11, 2024
A state that never had slaves, wants to pay people who were never slaves, with money they don’t have… Yeah, sounds about right~
— MANGA-MakeAmerica’sNavyGreatAgain (@NoMoreBullMitt) June 12, 2024
The most broke state in the country is going to pay reparations to people that weren’t even slaves. Ridiculous but typical of California.
— Sandra (@Amoreena1968) June 11, 2024
Where will they get the money? The state already has a $80 billion budget deficit and taxpayers are moving out in droves. California used to be such a great state.
— Cooking Cajun (@kwvidrine) June 11, 2024
— Karen2448k (@AKaren2448k) June 12, 2024
As previously reported, some legislators are even trying to pursue reparations on a national level. Take far-left “squad” member Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who expressed some creative ideas last January on how to pay out $14 trillion in reparations to 42 million black Americans.
“Who says the $14 trillion needs to be paid out in one shot?” he asked at the time. “It might be possible for it to be paid out over 5 or 10 or 20 years. You could take that $333,000 [per eligible black American] and break it up into monthly checks over X amount of time. There are creative ways to do the right thing and do what needs to be done.”
The fact that such a payment would effectively bankrupt America evidently didn’t concern him. Nor did the fact that there’s not a single black American alive who experienced slavery.
The specific piece of legislation that he backed and has sponsored, H.R. 414, would also bless black people with a bunch of other freebies.
“The bill calls for policies that would accompany the monetary awards: free college education at the nation’s 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, funding for the National Publishers Association and National Association of Black Broadcasters, and restoration of voting rights for persons currently or previously incarcerated,” according to The Journal News.
“I think people incarcerated should be able to vote,” Bowman said of the wider bill. “And I definitely think that when they come out, they should automatically be enfranchised.”
Thankfully, not everybody in the Democrat Party backed the bill.
“Supporting the bill are Bowman and former Bedford Supervisor MaryAnn Carr. She is challenging former Rep. Mondaire Jones for the Democratic nomination in the neighboring 17th District, now represented by Rep. Mike Lawler, R-Pearl River,” The Journal News notes.
Opposing the bill were Jones and Westchester County Executive George Latimer. However, while the two opposed the bill, they did support H.R. 40, which is a lightweight reparations bill that just calls for a reparations commission to study the issue, as well as an official federal apology for slavery.
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Author: Vivek Saxena
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