WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he is against reparations for slavery in part because it would be hard to know whom to pay.
The Kentucky Republican told reporters at his weekly news conference on Tuesday that “No, I don’t think reparations are a good idea.” He added that slavery “happened 150 years ago.”
McConnell said the U.S. has “tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation” and by electing Barack Obama the nation’s first black president.
He also said, “It would be hard to figure out who to compensate” and that, “No one currently alive was responsible for that.”
McConnell spoke a day before a Democratic-led House subcommittee was scheduled to hold a hearing on reparations.
