Reparations fight hits Congress as GOP looks to defund new DC task force
FIRST ON FOX: A group of House Republicans is moving to have federal funds blocked to any state or local area that enacts policies regarding slavery reparations.
It comes in response to Washington's new reparations task force, expected to be formed this year after the Democrat-controlled city council approved it in its budget last year, according to the Washington Times.
"That is now going to be, evidently, policy in Washington, D.C.," House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Brian Babin, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital. "I think this is a very timely bill to be able to push back on basically . . . virtue signaling."
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Babin, who introduced the No Bailouts for Reparations Act on Friday, called the matter of reparations "a milking of the U.S. taxpayer for a very narrow group of people."
"I think it is a privilege to be an American citizen. And certainly we have had, there was slavery in the past. There's been indentured servitude," Babin said. "No American taxpayer should be on the hook to pay reparations to individuals for something that happened over 150 years ago."
Reparations refer to measures to redress past wrongs. In the context of the U.S. political debate, the term almost always refers to payments to Black Americans whose families have suffered from slavery.
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It's a thorny political issue that's vehemently opposed by conservatives, who see it as a waste of taxpayer dollars for something that living Americans aren't responsible for, and backed by far-left progressives, who argue that the damages of slavery are still seen today.
Just earlier this year, "Squad" member Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., released legislation "to establish a federal commission to examine the lasting legacy of slavery and develop reparations proposals for African American descendants of enslaved people," according to a press release.
That bill is virtually guaranteed to wither on the vine in the 119th Congress, however, with Republicans controlling all the major levers of power in D.C.
President Donald Trump said, "I don’t see it happening" when asked about reparations in a 2019 interview with The Hill.
Babin's bill has circulated through the House for potential co-sponsors this week.
"I don't think the American people want to see divisiveness. They don't want to see special victim interest groups for something, and we fought a war over, and it's been over for 150 years," he said. "The nation should focus on policies to promote economic opportunity for everyone, not government handouts based on ancestry."