House to advance bill on reparations

WASHINGTON — A House panel is expected to advance a decadeslong effort to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves with a vote Wednesday on legislation that would create a commission to study the issue.

It’s the first time the House Judiciary Committee has acted on the legislation. Still, prospects for final passage remain poor in such a closely divided Congress.

The legislation would establish a 13-member commission to examine slavery and discrimination in the United States from 1619 to the present. The commission would then recommend ways to educate Americans about its findings and appropriate remedies, including how the government would offer a formal apology and what form of compensation should be awarded.

The bill, commonly referred to as H.R. 40, was first introduced by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., in 1989. The 40 refers to the failed government effort to provide 40 acres (16 hectares) of land to newly freed slaves as the Civil War drew to a close.

The momentum supporters have been able to generate for the bill this Congress follows the biggest reckoning on racism in a generation in the wake of George Floyd’s death while in police custody.

“By passing H.R. 40, Congress can also start a movement toward the national reckoning we need to bridge racial divides,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and the bill’s sponsor this Congress.

Still, the House bill has no Republicans among its 176 cosponsors and would need 60 votes in the evenly divided 5050 Senate to overcome a filibuster.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus brought up the bill during a meeting with Biden at the White House on Tuesday.

“We’re very comfortable with where President Biden is on H.R. 40,” Jackson Lee told reporters after the meeting.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who heads the House Administration Committee, said last month that she found the report, along with another she had reviewed, “detailed and disturbing.” The inspector general who prepared it, Michael A. Bolton, was scheduled to testify before Lofgren’s committee Thursday.

The Capitol Police said in a statement Wednesday that the siege was “a pivotal moment” in history that showed the need for “major changes” in how the department operates, but it was “important to note that nearly all of the recommendations require significant resources the department does not have.”