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presidential debates
William Barber Says Presidential Debates 'Failing' the Poor
"We should really be talking about how to abolish the majority of poverty, because we know what would happen if we did have serious living minimum wage and healthcare," Barber said.
Oct 03, 2024
William Barber, a bishop and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, said in an interview published Thursday that U.S. presidential debates, and the race more broadly, was "failing" the poor, whose needs and concerns he said aren't being addressed.
About 38 million people in the U.S. live in poverty, roughly 11.5% of the population, as determined by the federal government. PPC says that one-third of the electorate, or 85 million people, are poor or low-income.
"We're talking about poverty that is not an anomaly among one group of people. But in fact, is across the country, in every community, in every city," Barber told USA Today. "We should really be talking about how to abolish the majority of poverty, because we know what would happen if we did have serious living minimum wage and healthcare."
Both @KamalaHarris & @realDonaldTrump say they want to represent working people. Why not accept @RevDrBarber’s challenge to debate the causes of America’s exceptional poverty & the policies that could end it. https://t.co/TIjUvOof0O
— Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (@wilsonhartgrove) October 3, 2024
PPC was inspired by a 1968 movement of the same name organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and led by allies after his assassination. They set up a 3,000-person protest camp on Washington Mall in the spring of that year, staying for six weeks.
Barber, a Black pastor and political organizer from North Carolina, was among those who led the relaunch in 2018—Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival—which started with demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and at statehouses across the country.
Barber, who recently wrote a book about white poverty, has said that there's a "deafening silence" on the part of the media with regard to economic justice in the U.S.
Barber told USA Today that the debate moderators, as well as the presidential and vice presidential candidates, have failed to address it. He said Tuesday's vice presidential debate should have featured a question on a living minimum wage.
"To not have that as a major question and drill it down and make these candidates answer the question is a failing, we believe of the debate system," Barber said.
The current federal minimum wage is $7.25, set in 2009. Barber has frequently expressed outrage that Congress hasn't acted to raise it in the last 15 years.
In 2021, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) moved to raise the minimum wage to $15, via an amendment to the Covid-19 stimulus package, but all 50 Republican senators and eight members of the Democratic caucus voted it down.
Barber noted that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, raised the need to expand the child tax credit and for affordable housing in the debate, but said the moderators should have explicitly asked about the needs of poor people.
"I think there's a great failure of the press, of those who planned the debate, and even the politicians themselves, for not putting millions of people at the center of the political debate," Barber said.
Barber in fact recommended a reform to the debate format in which nonpartisan experts lay out facts on an issue before candidates speak—and people who are affected by an issue, rather than professional moderators, ask the questions.
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Groups Say Trump Threat Is Dire, But Harris Must Prove She Can Be a 'Climate President'
"This election is going to be incredibly close," said one Sunrise Movement organizer. "To win, Harris needs to show young people she will fight for us."
Sep 11, 2024
Up until the very last question of the debate between U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump Tuesday night, American voters heard little about fossil fuels and the climate, other than arguing over which presidential candidate is more committed to continuing fracking and its high rate of planet-heating methane emissions.
"One hour in. Still no climate questions," said journalist Emily Atkin at 10:00 pm.
But campaigners said that the brief coverage of energy and the climate emergency in the debate—which took place days after scientists reported the summer of 2024 was the hottest on record—made clearer than ever that if given a second term in office, Trump would fulfill the promise he made to oil executives earlier this year to slash the Biden-Harris' administration's climate regulations and clean energy development in favor of expanding oil and gas drilling.
Trump attacked the Biden-Harris administration for rescinding a key permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and bragged about getting "the oil business going like nobody has ever done before."
But JL Andrepont, a campaigner and analyst at 350 Action, said Harris' promises to continue fracking and statement boasting that she has helped oversee "the largest increase in domestic oil production in history" left much to be desired for U.S. voters, a majority of whom believe policymakers must do more to address the climate emergency.
"The climate crisis worsens daily, and yet Trump and VP Harris debated for 90 minutes and climate change was only mentioned at the end," said Andrepont. "We'll be upfront—the only way to ensure a safe and affordable future for Americans and beyond is to transition swiftly and justly from all fossil fuels, including fracked gas, and to renewable energy."
But while "Trump is singing 'drill baby drill' and Big Oil is holding up the mic," added Andrepont, Harris "knows that the climate crisis is real and already affecting far too many communities."
They suggested that choosing between Trump and Harris is a matter of choosing which president climate campaigners would rather push and negotiate with in order to expand renewable energy in the U.S., protect people from pollution and its threats to public health, and cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions.
"VP Harris is the only candidate who believes in climate change or even claims to represent the people, and we will hold her accountable to what that means. But we must fight for that chance," they said.
Allie Rosenbluth, campaign manager at Oil Change U.S., added that Harris must fulfill her promise to debate viewers that as president, she would "chart a course for the future and not go backwards to the past."
"That means taking decisive action to end fossil fuels and ensuring a just transition to renewable energy," said Rosenbluth. "We need a climate president—one who will invest in clean energy, end fossil fuel subsidies, and phase out fossil fuels to protect the communities most exposed to oil and gas pollution and the climate crisis. It's time for Harris to show she can be that president.”
Rosenbluth was among those who noted that Harris' comments on fracking, which she said she would allow to continue in Pennsylvania, where the debate took place, showed her willingness to take a "dangerous [position] that will keep us on the path towards catastrophic climate impacts and continue exposing frontline communities to deadly levels of fossil fuel pollution."
As Harris reminded voters that the Inflation Reduction Act, one of President Joe Biden's signature laws, expanded leases for fracking, the cancer-causing chemicals used in the oil and gas extraction method and its release of planet-heating methane went unmentioned.
Also ignored was the fact that polls in 2020 and 2021 showed majorities of Pennsylvanians opposed fracking.
What Harris could have said, Elizabeth Sawin of the Multisolving Institute wrote, was: "We are going to ban fracking because it is bad for air, water, people, and climate. Then we are going to take care of the people who are employed in that sector, helping them re-skill for jobs in the clean economy with good healthcare, childcare, and pay."
In a move that one climate leader said summed up "the American mainstream media's approach to the issue," co-moderator Linsey Davis of ABC News asked the candidates in the debate's final moments what they would each do to fight climate change.
Trump said nothing about the climate emergency in response to the question—instead accusing Biden of sending manufacturing jobs overseas and alluding to a debunked claim about money the president's son received from the wife of a Russian official.
Harris noted that Trump has previously called the climate crisis "a hoax" and acknowledged people who have faced the destruction of extreme weather in the U.S., and pointed to the investments the Biden administration has made in "a clean energy economy."
While Trump made clear that he would "give oil and gas CEOs exactly what they want," said Stevie O'Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, Harris overall "missed a critical opportunity to lay out a stark contrast with Trump and show young voters that she will stand up to Big Oil and stop the climate crisis."
The Sunrise Movement has not endorsed Harris but has launched a voter outreach campaign supporting Harris, with a plan to knock on 1.5 million doors in swing states, and O'Hanlon reported that "we hear people asking every day, 'What are Democrats going to do for us?'"
"Young voters want more from Harris. We want to see a real plan that meets the scale and urgency of this crisis. Seventy-eight percent of young voters in key swing states say climate change is a major issue shaping their vote," said O'Hanlon. "This election is going to be incredibly close... To win, Harris needs to show young people she will fight for us."Keep ReadingShow Less
Harris Urged to Back $17 Minimum Wage During Debate With Trump
"This would make a major difference for the affordability crisis so many face," said Rep. Ro Khanna.
Sep 10, 2024
Congressman Ro Khanna expressed hope on Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris' pledge to "fight to raise the minimum wage" on her newly released list of policy proposals would not be her last word on the matter, and urged her to speak out more specifically by backing a $17 minimum wage at the first presidential debate between her and Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Khanna (D-Calif.) said the Democratic nominee must send a clear message to many "voters who are living paycheck to paycheck in swing states," by showing that she is committed to improving their day-to-day lives with concrete economic policies.
Attaching a dollar amount to her promise to raise the minimum wage would show voters that she aims to "make a major difference for the affordability crisis so many face," said Khanna.
Several battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, have minimum wages that match the federal minimum pay—$7.25 per hour—which hasn't been updated in 15 years.
Harris backed a $15 federal minimum wage when she ran for president in 2020, eight years after fast food workers launched the Fight for $15 national campaign.
But last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) proposed raising the federal floor for wages to $17 per hour within five years, with Sanders saying, "A job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it."
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Living Wage Calculator, even people in states with relatively low costs of living would need to earn significantly more than $15 per hour to enjoy a decent standard of living.
In both Mississippi and Alabama, for example, one adult with no children would need to earn more than $19 per hour to make a living wage. Two working adults raising one child would need to make $17.89 each, but they would need to make more than $21 each per hour if they had a second child.
"Raising our federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $17 is not radical," said Liz Shuler, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), last year.
At HuffPost on Tuesday, Dave Jamieson noted that providing specifics about her plans to raise the wage floor would further clarify for swing state voters how Harris differs from her GOP opponent on this issue, as Trump has "never had a coherent vision for the minimum wage" and "has contradicted himself so often on the issue that The Washington Post's fact-checking operation once created a 'guide to all of Donald Trump's flip-flops on the minimum wage.'"
While campaigning for president in 2016, Trump said at various points that he did not support any federal minimum wage, that raising it would be a "big, big problem," and that that he was "looking at" raising it.
One Fair Wage (OFW), which has campaigned on ending the subminimum wage of just $2.13 for tipped workers, applauded Harris for her support for that policy, saying it offers a clear contrast to Trump and could appeal to 14 million service workers, including millions in swing states, who could sway the election.
"While both campaigns have called for the elimination of taxes on tips, this policy alone would only benefit about one-third of tipped workers," said the group. "Most workers wouldn't see any real relief, as their earnings are too low for them to benefit from a tax cut. That's why the Harris-Walz campaign's commitment to ending the subminimum wage stands out—it acknowledges that eliminating taxes on tips is not enough, and that workers need a true wage increase by ending the $2.13/hr subminimum wage for tipped workers, allowing them to earn a full minimum wage with tips on top."
"By taking this bold stance, the Harris-Walz campaign is aligning itself with a growing movement of workers and advocates fighting to create an economy where everyone can thrive," said OFW.
Saru Jayaraman, president of the organization, added that the policy would "lift millions of people out of poverty, close racial and gender pay gaps, and provide a foundation for economic security that all working people deserve."
"Raising wages resonates with millions of Americans who have been left behind by the current system, and the Harris-Walz campaign's commitment to this issue will not only energize voters but set the stage for a fairer, more equitable economy," she added.
Last week, Sanders toldRolling Stone that in the last eight weeks of the campaign, he hopes Harris will "expose Trump for the fraud that he is" and "develop an agenda for working-class people and trade unionists that will be very much in contrast with Trump."
"Raising the minimum wage to a living wage," said Sanders, "will improve wages for many millions of lower-income Americans."
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