Three a long time after it was first launched and a century and a half after the tip of slavery, a bill to create a national reparations commission to suggest methods to redress the wrongs of human bondage within the United States will get its first vote in a committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

The invoice — labeled H.R. 40 after the unfulfilled Civil War-era promise to give former slaves “40 acres and a mule” — faces an uphill path amid opposition from Republicans and lots of Democrats. Democratic leaders haven’t but promised a vote by the total House.

But because the nation grapples anew with systemic racism, the invoice now counts assist from the president of the United States and key congressional leaders.

“We think it will be cleansing for this nation and it will be a step moving America forward to see us debate this issue on the floor of the House,” mentioned Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, who grew to become the lead sponsor of the invoice first proposed in 1989 by the late Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan.

Mr. Biden has positioned addressing racial inequities at the center of his domestic policy agenda, proposing billions of {dollars} in investments in Black farmers, enterprise homeowners, neighborhoods, college students and the poor. The White House has mentioned Mr. Biden’s $four trillion jobs agenda goals, partially, to “tackle systemic racism and rebuild our economy and our social safety net so that every person in America can reach their full potential.

Though the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the bill for the first time in 2019, it has never voted to advance it, as it is expected to on Wednesday.

Proponents of reparations differ on what form, precisely, they should take, though many agree that Mr. Biden’s proposals encompass the kinds of compensation that might be considered the modern-day equivalent of 40 acres and a mule. But that does not mean they are a replacement, they say.

“If this is about the full ramifications on Black wealth, about the destruction of entire businesses or neighborhoods, or the deprivation and loss of land, then we are talking about numbers that are far beyond the reach of what are relatively small programmatic initiatives,” mentioned William A. Darity Jr., a professor of public coverage at Duke University who has written a ebook on reparations.

Mr. Darity’s imaginative and prescient of reparations primarily focuses on closing the wealth hole between African Americans and white folks, one thing that he estimates would take $10 trillion or extra in authorities funds.

The invoice into consideration within the House, and a companion measure launched by Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, would impanel a 13-person fee to examine the results of slavery and the a long time of financial discrimination that adopted, usually with authorities involvement, and suggest potential methods to tackle their destructive impression. The fee would additionally contemplate a “national apology” for the hurt attributable to slavery.

Opponents of reparations usually argue that the wrongs of slavery are just too far previous and too diffuse to be virtually addressed now. They query why taxpayers, lots of whom got here to the United States lengthy after slavery ended, ought to foot a probably massive invoice for funds or different types of compensation to Black Americans.

Roy L. Brooks, a legislation professor on the University of San Diego who has additionally written on the problem, argues that the aim of reparations shouldn’t be seen as primarily financial nor one thing that may be handled in the midst of regular policymaking, regardless of how efficient.

“The purpose has to be bringing about racial reconciliation, and it can’t get swallowed up in generic domestic legislation, or else the significance is lost,” he mentioned.