America has never actually added it up. Not the moral verdict — history rendered that long ago and it isn’t in serious dispute. The arithmetic: what slavery and a century of government-sanctioned racial injustice cost the people they were done to, what they produced for those who benefited, what wealth moved and to whom. This commission produces facts, not verdicts — a rigorous, primary-source, peer-reviewed accounting. Congress then decides what, if anything, to do with them.
For a century and a half the country fought about the legacy of slavery and legal racial injustice using guesses, anecdotes, and whatever numbers served the argument.Check it
No rigorous, primary-source, peer-reviewed accounting of the actual economics was ever produced — what was taken, what it built, whose wealth it became.Check it
Commissions that were proposed could be starved of funding or quietly dissolved before they ever reported.Check it
And even when findings existed, Congress could simply ignore them — no hearing, no vote, no obligation to look.Check it
A 15-member commission, jointly appointed across parties and branches, with subpoena authority and a five-year mandate to produce the factual economic record.
It is not a reparations commission. It recommends no policy and awards nothing. It produces facts — rigorous, primary-source, peer-reviewed. Its product is knowledge; its mandate is honesty.
It cannot be defunded or dissolved before it delivers. The obvious way to kill an inconvenient truth is closed.
And Congress must respond: hearings within six months, a recorded vote on legislation within two years. Members have to go on the record. Ignoring it is no longer an option.
The moral question was settled by history long ago — but the economic facts were never systematically assembled, leaving every debate to run on assertion.Check it
A factual economic accounting: what the injustices cost the people they were imposed on, what they produced for those who benefited, what wealth was transferred and from whom to whom, and what that legacy looks like in the economy today. Primary-source grounded and peer-reviewed.
Any such body risked being stacked, or being seen as stacked — which is how findings get dismissed before they’re read.Check it
15 members: five from the President; four from the Senate, drawn from a list agreed jointly by majority and minority leadership; four from the House on the same joint basis; and two more appointed as specified. Cross-party joint nomination is built into the structure.
Researchers had no power to compel records that institutions preferred to keep closed.Check it
Subpoena authority and a five-year mandate — enough power and enough time to actually assemble the record rather than sample around its edges.
The reliable way to defeat an inconvenient inquiry was to strangle its budget or dissolve it before it spoke.Check it
Protected from defunding and from dissolution before the report is delivered. It finishes its work, and then it dissolves on a defined process — not when someone finds its findings unwelcome.
Reports could be received and shelved. No hearing, no vote, no accountability for looking away.Check it
A response obligation: hearings within six months of delivery, and a recorded vote on legislation within two years. Congress may decide to do nothing — but it must decide in public, on the record.
Every attempt at an accounting collapsed into a fight about reparations before a single fact was gathered.Check it
Emphatically not a reparations commission. It determines no payments, awards nothing, and issues no policy recommendations. It integrates with the CRIF funding formula in CS-14 as a factual input — nothing more. The facts come first; the decisions belong to the people’s representatives.
This is the plain-language version. The binding text is CS-17, which implements Article Seventeen of the Constitution.
This is your country’s law. Help shape the next draft of it.
