Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” former Obama HUD Secretary and 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate Julián Castro suggested reparations as a means to overcome the sins of America’s past.

Castro said, “What I said was that I’ve long believed that this country should address slavery, the original sin of slavery, including by looking at reparations.”

He continued, “If I’m president, then I’m going to appoint a commission other task force to determine the best way to do that. There’s a tremendous amount of disagreement on how we would do that. Let me say something about senator Sanders’ response there. He was also asked this question in 2016. What he said on ’The View’ the other day, I think, he didn’t think the best way to address this was for the United States to write a check. To my mind that may or may not be the best way to address it.”

”However, it’s interesting to me that when it comes to Medicare for all, health care, you know the response has we need to write a big check, that when it comes to tuition-free or debt-free college, the answer has been we need to write a big check, Castro added. ”So if the issue is compensating the descendants of slaves, I don’t think the argument about writing a big check ought to be the argument you make if you’re making the argument that a big check needs to be written for a whole bunch of other stuff. If under the Constitution we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were property.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN