California, which never allowed slavery, is nonetheless considering giving hundreds of billions of dollars to Black residents in reparations as a way to make amends for slavery, raising practical questions about how a state already facing a massive budget deficit could swing such an expensive program.
The California Reparations Task Force, which was created by state legislation in 2020, is weighing a proposal to dole out just under $360,000 per person to approximately 1.8 million Black Californians who had an ancestor enslaved in the U.S., putting the total cost of the program at about $640 billion.
However, it is unclear how California would pay for such an extensive project. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who signed the bill creating the task force and appointed most of its members, announced in January that the state faces a projected budget deficit of $22.5 billion for the coming fiscal year.
To make matters worse, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), a government agency that analyzes the budget for the state legislature, estimated in a subsequent report that Newsom’s forecast undershot the mark by about $7 billion, thanks to about $10 billion less in tax revenues than expected.
The task force was created amid the unrest following the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. None of the panel’s nine members are White.
The panel also recommended a “comprehensive debt forgiveness” program that would clear all personal, educational and credit card debt of low-income Black households.
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Article URL : https://www.foxnews.com/politics/newsoms-california-pushes-billions-in-reparations-payments-state-faces-budget-deficit-disaste