Veteran politician Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said America paid for its “original sin” of slavery by electing President Barack Obama.
McConnell told reporters he was against compensating Black people for slavery. “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” McConnell said on the eve of the Juneteenth congressional hearing on H.R. 40. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a Civil War, by passing landmark Civil Rights legislation, we’ve elected an African-American president.
“I think we’re always a work in progress in this country, but no one currently alive was responsible for that and I don’t think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it,” McConnell told reporters.
