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moral monday
Rev. Barber Leads Moral Monday March Against 'Big Beautiful Bill' Amid Senate Debate
The bill would "rob the poor, starve children, and deny care to the sick in order to line the pockets of the wealthy."
Jun 02, 2025
As the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" made its way to the U.S. Senate Monday, with lawmakers preparing to consider cuts to Medicaid and food assistance and an extension of tax cuts for the rich, one of the nation's top anti-poverty campaigners warned that the proposed budget "is not just bad policy, it is sin."
Rev. William J. Barber II led a "Moral Monday" rally and march through Washington, D.C. to the U.S. Capitol, where he and other advocates spoke out against the proposal that was narrowly passed by the House last month and would "rob the poor, starve children, and deny care to the sick in order to line the pockets of the wealthy."
"We will not stand by while it preys on the most vulnerable," said Barber.
Along with the Institute for Policy Studies and the Economic Policy Institute, Barber's organization, Repairers of the Breach, re-released an earlier report Monday on the proposed budget with additional information about communities that would be impacted if the budget is passed into law.
The budget, said Repairers of the Breach, would result in:
- A loss of health insurance for an estimated 8.6 million Medicaid enrollees, due to new work requirements that would penalize the minority of beneficiaries who don't work—those who attend school, care for family members, or have a disability;
- A loss of coverage for an additional 4 million people whose tax credits would expire;
- The end of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for 11 million people who would be subject to work requirements or whose states would be forced to cut back on aid;
- The loss of the child tax credit for 4.5 million children whose parents don't have Social Security numbers; and
- More than $100 billion for border wall construction, new immigration detention centers, and new investments in community arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
At the rally, Barber spoke about how members of the House voted for a budget that could directly harm hundreds of thousands of their constituents.
"They don't want us to talk about the fact that the largest portion of Medicaid enrollees are families with incomes below $40,000," said Barber. "These are working poor people... In West Virginia for instance, 28% of the entire population is covered by Medicaid. Over 500,000 [people]. And yet every Republican from West Virginia voted to cut. In Ohio, 26% of the people are covered by Medicaid. That's where [Vice President JD] Vance is from... We're talking about children and pregnant women, and adults and people with disabilities."
Repairers of the Breach said it would send delegations into the Senate office buildings to hand senators a petition calling on them to oppose the "immoral cuts" in the proposed budget.
Republicans in the Senate can only afford to lose three votes. Lawmakers including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have suggested major changes will need to be made to the House-passed bill in order for it to be approved—with the senators expressing concern more for the federal deficit than the well-being of millions of Americans who would lose healthcare and food assistance.
"I think there are four of us at this point, and I would be very surprised if the bill at least is not modified in a good direction," Paul told CBS News on Sunday.
Barber told rally-goers on Monday: "We have to stop believing when they say something's over."
"It ain't over until it's over," he said, "and it's not over until all of us have spoken."
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It's a Poverty Emergency and We Must Act
Lives cut short from poverty and low-wealth is a moral indictment of a society that is abandoning millions amid abundance.
Oct 19, 2023
In the richest country in human history, poverty has become a death sentence. Yes, despite the fact that the United States throws out more food than is needed to feed every hungry person, that the nation spends more and has more cutting edge developments in health care than any other nation, and despite the GDP growing exponentially over the past years, poverty is the fourth largest killer. Poor people can expect to die 12 or 13 years sooner than rich people in the US, with the death rate gap between rich and poor increasing by 570% since 1980.
In a recent series on declining life expectancy, the Washington Post reports that, “The United States is failing at a fundamental mission—keeping people alive.” This new series shows that the US has a significantly lower life expectancy than other nations with similar economic development. The Post continues, “America is increasingly a country of haves and have-nots, measured not just by bank accounts and property values but also by vital signs and grave markers. Dying prematurely, The Post found, has become the most telling measure of the nation’s growing inequality.”
For too long, poverty has been pushed from the national agenda. For too long, corporate profits have been put before people.
This death measurement indeed is telling. It paints a picture of a country with the resources to raise wages, end homelessness, expand health care, and invest in child care and other needed resources to help struggling families but refuses to do so. It demonstrates a society (with Congress as the speartip) that keeps proposing cuts to health care, food assistance, education, and more even after policy experts have shown that such cuts result in suffering and death.
As theologians and preachers, we know this is not just a health crisis (although Medicaid cuts that could throw as many as 24 million off its rolls is most definitely a healthcare emergency of epic proportions). Lives cut short by poverty and low-wealth is a moral indictment of a society that is abandoning millions amid abundance.
In September, the US Census published the most recent poverty numbers. The US Census report marks a significant increase of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) from 2021 to 2022, nearly doubling child poverty in the most significant growth in child poverty since the SPM was adopted. These numbers show that 41% of the US population is poor or low-income; 135 million people cannot afford a couple hundred dollar emergency. This reality is an emergency, and anyone who claims to value life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must treat it as such.
This crisis of poverty and low-wealth requires an emergency response. It requires an emergency meeting between poor and low-income leaders, clergy, economists, public policy experts and the president of the United States at the White House to hear stories and solutions to poverty and policy murder.
It is calling us to a season of direct action, including moral assemblies at state capitols across the country, imploring our elected leaders to support an agenda that tackles poverty and other systemic injustices because there are policy solutions to all of these problems. The Third Reconstruction we are building towards is a revival of our constitutional commitment to establish justice, provide for the general welfare, end decades of austerity, and recognize that policies that center the 140 million poor and low-income people in the country are also good economic policies that can heal and transform the nation.
It means we are committing to convene and converge on Washington D.C. on June 15, 2024 for a Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers Assembly and Moral March on Washington. And it compels a massive get out the vote effort to enliven and enlarge the electorate of poor and low-wealth voters who hold the power to shift the political calculus of the nation and vote for truth and life and love and justice.
For too long, poverty has been pushed from the national agenda. For too long, corporate profits have been put before people. For too long, we have heard the false narrative that poverty may be unfortunate but inevitable and poor people are to blame for their poverty and if people just worked harder and prayed more, they would not be poor anymore. But as Ms. Yara Allen writes in the anthem of our movement, The Poor People's Campaign, “Somebody’s been hurting our people, people are dying from poverty and policy murder, it’s gone on for too long, and we won’t be silent anymore.”
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Fonda's Fire Drill Fridays Returns to DC Streets Over Manchin Dirty Deal
"The time is now to vote out the politicians like Joe Manchin that are having the dirty deal perpetuated and who think that their pollution and their profits are more important than our lives," said White House adviser Jerome Foster II.
Dec 02, 2022
Fire Drill Fridays--the climate action protest launched three years ago by actor and activist Jane Fonda--returned Friday morning to Washington, D.C., where participants rallied and marched against U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin's "dirty deal" while demanding President Joe Biden declare a climate emergency.
"What we do or fail to do in the next eight to 10 years to cut our fossil fuel emissions in half will determine how much of a livable future we will have."
"Organizing does not stop after an election, does it? We must hold the folks we got into office accountable to us, not to oil companies, because the fossil fuel industry does not stop, so we can never stop," Fonda told demonstrators gathered in Freedom Plaza near the White House.
"Time is running out. Scientists are telling us we are in our last decade of action," she added. "What we do or fail to do in the next eight to 10 years to cut our fossil fuel emissions in half will determine how much of a livable future we will have. So this is the time. This is the time for bold action before it's too late. And that's exactly why we are here right now."
Inspired by activists including Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg, Moral Mondays co-founder Bishop William J. Barber II, and author Naomi Klein, Fonda started Fire Drill Fridays in 2019 in collaboration with Greenpeace USA. Fonda and other activists were arrested for civil disobedience during the protests, which continued until the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic the following year, when the demonstrations went online.
\u201cLIVE: Tune in to the @FireDrillFriday #ClimateEmergency Rally with @JaneFonda and movement allies in D.C! \ud83d\udd25\ud83d\udc4f\n\nYou won\u2019t want to miss this day of inspiration and action with special guests as we sound the alarm on the climate crisis! https://t.co/hI3u3emk3K\u201d— Greenpeace USA (@Greenpeace USA) 1669996324
The activists took aim at Manchin's so-called dirty deal, proposed permitting modifications favorable to the fossil fuel industry that, while left out of a stopgap funding bill in September, could be revived if the West Virginia Democrat successfully includes it in the next National Defense Authorization Act--which lawmakers are working to pass by the end of the year.
Jerome Foster II--a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and, at 20, the youngest-ever presidential adviser--told demonstrators that by being there, they were showing that "the time is now to vote out the politicians like Joe Manchin that are having the dirty deal perpetuated and who think that their pollution and their profits are more important than our lives."
"They chose pollution of their children. They chose profits over our future. And we are tired of having to come here and demand the bare minimum," Foster added.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) spoke at the demonstration, declaring, "We cannot develop any more fossil fuel infrastructure."
"You know what's in that dirty deal? The Mountain Valley Pipeline for fossil gas," he continued. "And it would mow down every single environmental law in the process... We've got to keep it out of the National Defense Authorization Act... And no dirty deal in any continuing resolution or any other budget bill."
Merkley added that "we need President Biden to declare a climate emergency" and "use all the powers of the federal government to respond to this biggest test of humanity."
\u201cMaria Lopez-Nu\u00f1ez of @IronboundCC + @CJAOurPower just gave an incredibly powerful testimony against Manchin\u2019s #DirtyDeal at @JaneFonda\u2019s #FireDrillFridays in DC.\n\nEvery member of Congress should watch this clip + decide: Will they stand w/ people or w/ big polluters? #NoDirtyDeal\u201d— Collin Rees (@Collin Rees) 1670001106
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) told the protesters that "this Manchin dirty deal unfortunately is not unique. There are other dirty deals that threaten the health of people for profit margins."
"We cannot address climate change," he added, "if the balance of power is such that oil and gas interests control the agenda."
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