A top California Democrat was nearly brought to tears last week during a brief emotional breakdown during a committee hearing on state slave reparations. The bill passed anyway.
California’s Leftist Committee Approves Bill for Reparations that Could Cost $800 Billion (VIDEO)
As the Daily Mail reported, Latina California Republican Kate Sanchez spoke to the committee. Then the Indian-American chair of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, choked up after her comments.
The two politicians were debating Senate Bill 1331, which, as the Mail notes is just one of 14 reparations bills being considered by Democrat lawmakers after a state task force last year called for $1.2 million packages to compensate every descendant of slavery.
Sanchez, a businesswoman from the Los Angeles suburbs, started by emphasizing the astronomical cost of reparations and noting the horrific unfairness of such a scheme.
“The total amount (cost of reparations) could be as much as $800 billion, that is two and a half times the size of our entire state budget,” Sanchez explained. “To pay for that, you’d need a major tax hike, unlike anything this state has ever seen before.”
“The pains of our past should not be paid by the people of today,” she continued.
Sanchez then noted it was particularly unfair to force California residents to pay reparations when the state is majority-minority.
“The majority of our population is Latino and Asian, making up 55% of our population, she said. “Most of them, like me, are first, second, or third generation immigrants who had nothing to do with slavery, discrimination, Jim Crow laws, nothing.”
“It is fundamentally unfair to force these people to pay for this and because of that, I will be opposing today,” she concluded.
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Kalra did not take the lecture well at all and had to pause during his response to hold back tears.
“At the end of the day, compensation is necessary,” he replied. “You know, I, uh, understand those of us in the legislature to make those commitments.”
“But no one asked Black families over generations if it was okay to take their wealth..if it was okay to,” he continued before suddenly stopping.
“If it was okay to force their children into generations of poverty,” he said while choking back tears as fellow Democrats applauded him. “We became a superpower based on free labor.
‘We still benefit to this day from what happened to our brothers and sisters in the black community, he elaborated. “I know it’s not going to be easy.”
“It’s not supposed to be easy to actually admit when you’ve caused pain.”
