President Obama and a Democratic Congress? President McCain and a Republican Congress? Americans Split on Divided Government

The exposure of Obama's 2001 comments about Reparations reminds me that there is a House Bill already drafted that could lead to taxpayers paying reparations.

Source: The Hill

Patient Conyers hopes to move slavery bill during an Obama administration

By Bob Cusack 3/08

After waiting nearly two decades, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) is well positioned to move legislation that could lead the federal government to apologize for slavery and pay reparations.

But the Judiciary Committee chairman is willing to wait two more years, when he hopes Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will be in the White House.

In every Congress since 1989, Conyers has introduced the controversial measure that falls under the sole jurisdiction of the Judiciary panel. But the legislation was dormant in the Republican-led House and failed to move through committee when then-Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Texas) headed the Judiciary Committee before the GOP revolution of 1994.

Despite having finally arrived at the head of the powerful committee, the 77-year-old Conyers is prepared to wait yet longer and is biding his time.

Conyers noted that his bill calls for the president to appoint three members to a seven-member commission to analyze the effects of slavery. The House Speaker would make three appointments, while the president pro tempore of the Senate would tap one member.

Even if he had the votes to make his bill law — a big if — Conyers does not want President Bush’s appointees to have a role on such a panel.

The Michigan lawmaker, who has strongly backed Obama for president, said he has not called on the senator to endorse his measure. “I don’t want to put him on the spot,” Conyers told The Hill.

Obama’s campaign did not respond to requests for information about the senator’s position on the bill, H.R. 40. Yet Obama’s stance could be extremely important as he and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) vigorously court the black vote and wrap themselves in the mantle of the civil rights movement.

Both front-runners visited Selma, Ala., this month to commemorate the sacrifices of black demonstrators who were assaulted crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

The Clinton campaign also did not comment on the Conyers bill.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), another 2008 White House hopeful, supports the Conyers measure and a formal apology for slavery. In a statement, Richardson said, “Slavery is one of the most tragic periods of our great nation, and we continue to struggle with the legacy of slavery.”

Conyers’s measure recently attracted the cosponsorship of civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

Lewis said he believes the federal government should follow Virginia’s recent lead and apologize for slavery, though he opposes reparations.

The Bush administration indicated opposition to Conyers’s bill in 2001, when then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said living African-Americans should not be paid for the wrongs of slavery.

Conyers countered that reparations should not be dismissed prematurely, pointing out that trust funds have been established for Holocaust survivors, World War II-era internment victims and Native Americans.

The bill instructs the commission to review whether “any form of compensation to the descendants of African slaves is warranted.” The legislation adds that if the commission approves such compensation, it should determine who should be eligible for the reparations. The commission would be appropriated $8 million.

Most of the cosponsors of the measure are black, including Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.). White members who back it include Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and John Olver (D-Mass.).

Senior leadership lawmakers, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), have never cosponsored H.R. 40.

Freshman Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a white member who replaced Rep. Harold Ford (D), recently introduced a bill that calls on the U.S. to apologize for slavery. The measure has 36 cosponsors, including Conyers.

Cohen said he was aware that Conyers wants to wait on H.R. 40, but expressed optimism that the 110th Congress would move forward on his measure.

The number of the Conyers bill, H.R. 40, was chosen by Conyers as a symbol of the 40 acres and a mule that the U.S. initially promised freed slaves. Conyers said the Judiciary Committee will likely hold a hearing on H.R. 40 this fall.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) formally backs the Cohen bill, but is not a cosponsor of the Conyers measure. The presidential campaigns of Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and former Sens. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) did not comment for this article.

Stacey Pistritto contributed to this report

Despite Conyers intentions somehow the bill ended up getting a hearing in late 2007, which upset an "anonymous" congressman

Congressional Hearing Held on Slavery Reparations Bill

Final Call,

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - For the first time ever, the U.S. Congress officially studied the institution of slavery, its legacy, as well as U.S. efforts to address it and its consequences, during hearings by the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on Dec. 18.

It was the first time H.R. 40, the proposal to establish a Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act has had any kind of a hearing, even though the legislation has been introduced every year for almost two decades by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

“For over 19 years, I have introduced H.R. 40—not to spark controversy or promote division—but to direct attention to a historical wrong that warrants substantial consideration,” Mr. Conyers said when he gaveled the session to order. “With an H.R. 40 commission, this nation could come closer to racial equality and understanding. Slavery is a blemish on this nation’s history, and until it is addressed, our country’s story will remain marked,” he continued.

The racial disparities, which exist throughout the society are ample evidence, Mr. Conyers insisted, that the vestiges of slavery remain: the Black high school drop-out rate is 50 percent compared to 23 percent for Whites; national average scores in math, science and reading for Black 17-year-olds are comparable to the scores for White 13-year-olds; the poverty rate of Blacks, at 24 percent, is twice the national average.

H.R. 40 is “necessary for this nation,” Mr. Conyers insisted. “We are here today to help folks open their minds as they consider supporting H.R. 40. I truly believe that today’s hearing will start the national dialogue,” which can lead to the formal establishment of a slavery commission, he said.

“This hearing looks not just to the past, but to the legacy of our own history of slavery as it continues to affect race relations and inequality in present day America,” agreed committee member Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). “It is our duty to ask the difficult questions and to face up to our responsibilities to remedy the ongoing injustice of slavery that remains a part of our society.”

The outright call for reparation payments, as well as for a commission to study reparations as a possible remedy for the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, was supported by scholars, activists, church leaders, and even members of Congress.

“The horrors of the slave trade have yet to be addressed and the passage of time makes it even more difficult for us to respond to one of the most tragic, brutal, and for some, financially beneficial periods in American history,” Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree testified.

“I support the call for reparations for the descendants of the millions of slaves who toiled in this country for decades, and who never were compensated for their labor,” said Prof. Ogletree.

“This was a momentous occasion here today, to provide an opportunity to address H.R. 40, which would establish a commission to look at the era of enslavement and whether it has impact on present day African Americans,” Kibibi Tyehimba, co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), told The Final Call. “This is about getting the truth out. We were very happy to be here today, so we can begin that process.

“It’s absolutely imperative that we understand that African life is as valuable as other lives: as Native Americans, as Jewish Holocaust victims, as Japanese Americans, and until we get to that point, we will continue to blame African descendants for their own oppression, and we’ve got to move past that.”

And while some White churches also came forward to offer their denomination’s apologies for involvement in the slave trade, not all Black reparations supporters were pleased with the timing or execution of the hearing. At least one activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Final Call the entire hearing was poorly planned, done with little prior notice, held at the end of the legislative year during the holiday season, and without the national attention that the subject of reparations for slavery deserves.

“Too many Episcopalians did not raise their voices,” against slavery “when God would have wished them to do so,” Bishop Thomas Shaw, from the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts said during the hearing. “Episcopalians were owners of slaves and of the ships that brought them to this land,” Bishop Shaw testified representing Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on behalf of the Episcopal Church. “Episcopalians lived in the north and in the south and, as a privileged church, we today recognize that our Church benefited materially from the slave trade.”

“The importance of the Episcopal Church being present to testify at this hearing on H.R. 40 cannot be overstated,” Jayne Oasin, social justice officer of the Episcopal Church, said according to a published report. “Our church must call itself and our country to repentance. Since we have always held and still hold great power in this country, we are duty bound to follow St. Paul’s admonition in Roman’s 12 to not ‘conform’ but to ‘transform’ the country by the power of the Holy Spirit working through us. Studying the issue of reparations for slavery is a key way to begin to transform ourselves, our church and our country.”

The Episcopal Church has “asked God’s forgiveness for our complicity in and the injury done by the institution of slavery and its aftermath,” Bishop Shaw said.

“Oversight Hearing on The Legacy of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.” Academic and public policy experts reviewed the legacy of the slave trade in American history and culture, and placed it into a Congressional record. Another hearing is scheduled in February.

hawker of PA 8:23AM October 29, 2008