Conservatives Upset by New $14 Trillion Reparations Proposal

Representative Cori Bush has introduced a proposal to formally pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans, drawing the ire of numerous conservatives online.

Bush, a progressive Democrat representing Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, submitted the legislative proposal on Thursday, but announced it a day earlier alongside fellow House Democrats, Barbara Lee of California and Jamaal Bowman of New York. The bill would call for payments totaling around $14 trillion to address the generational damages inflicted on Black Americans by centuries of slavery and a subsequent century and a half of racist policies.

“The United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people,” Bush said. “America must provide reparations if we desire a prosperous future for all.”

Scholars and experts have championed direct payments to the descendants of enslaved people as a means of directly addressing the legacy of racism in the U.S., which has left many Black families perpetually in poverty and unable to accumulate generational wealth.

Newsweek reached out via email to Bush’s press office for comment.

Such proposals have consistently faced pushback from conservatives and Bush’s latest was no different. On Saturday, former GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger, otherwise known for standing with Democrats in opposition to the far-right fringes of his own party, criticized the proposal for its steep price tag.

“Democrats: why are we losing the working class?” Kinzinger tweeted. “Cori Bush: <in 14 trillion dollars>.”

Lavern Spicer, a failed Republican congressional candidate from Florida, posted an extended rebuke to Bush’s proposal, suggesting that she did not actually care about Black Americans and claiming that she was part of a group she dubbed “slaver-class Blacks.”

In his own tweet, conservative media personality Wayne DuPree also called out the steep price tag of the proposal, mockingly asking, “Why not $500 gazillion?”

In an article discussing the news, Fox News equated the proposed cost of the reparations to “nearly 7 Afghanistan wars in spending.”

Despite the latest round of pushback, proposals like Bushs’ are increasingly common and picking up steam on a more local scale, with several cities and the state of California considering reparation payments for residents.

The concept of reparation payments in recompense for historical atrocities is also not unheard of internationally. Between 1953 and 1987, West Germany paid the modern equivalent of roughly $36 billion in reparations to Israel for the losses suffered as a result of the nation’s persecution of and theft of property from Jewish residents during World War II.

In the U.S., support for the notion of reparations for slavery varies greatly between demographics but is broadly unpopular. While Black Americans “overwhelmingly support” the idea, according to NPR, around 75 percent of white adults oppose it, as do majorities of Latin American and Asian American adults. Along partisan lines, Democrats are split evenly on the idea, while 90 percent of Republicans oppose it. In general, however, younger Americans are more likely to support reparations than older Americans.