Rev. William Barber II demands focus on poverty, proposes debate format to 'put facts out'
This story has been updated to clarify statements made by JD Vance.
As the nation reviewed the vice presidential debate between Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz Tuesday night, Rev. William J. Barber II noticed one group of people missing from the conversation: the poor.
The founder of Repairers of the Breach, The Poor People's Campaign and the Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale told Paste BN in an interview Wednesday that the presidential race, and by extension the vice presidential debate, was not revealing solutions for the nearly 38 million people living in poverty in the country.
"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 said. "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 health care."
Barber was unsparing in his criticism of statements made by Vance during the debate, including those on the Affordable Care Act and on his position on abortion.
"I saw some of the un-Christian type statements coming out of Vance's mouth. He wasn't hollering, he wasn't cussing, he wasn't being belittling. He was doing it with a smile, in some sense, makes it worse," Barber said.
Rev. Barber wants greater focus on poverty in campaign
Barber criticized the debate for lacking questions about those facing poverty and working for low wages, specifically raising the federal minimum wage to what he called 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 last attempt to raise the federal minimum wage occurred in 2021 when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) added a proposal as an amendment to the March COVID-19 stimulus bill. The amendment was defeated when eight Democrats voted with the entirety of the Republicans in the Senate, 58-42.
Barber recognized that the Biden administration has taken executive action to raise the minimum wage for federal workers to $15 per hour in 2021, after the Sanders amendment was defeated.
The last successful raising of the minimum wage came in 2009.
"Everything else has gone up," Barber said. "Prices have gone up, the amount of work has gone up, and yet we're in 2009 with the minimum wage. It is really at almost like 1960s level in terms of buying power."
Barber noted that Walz brought up the campaign's plans for expanding the child tax credit and increasing access to housing, but felt that not having the needs of the nation's poor explicitly addressed in a question was the responsibility of the moderators.
"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.
Reverend comments on faith in debate
Barber noted that the moment when Walz referenced his faith and Matthew 25:40 from the Bible, it appeared the Democratic candidate was speaking, "from the heart."
"The thing he was saying, he was saying, as a matter of faith, there's plenty of clear directions for how you should operate in the political square as a person of faith and who happens to be elected," Barber said.
"To be a nation where the leadership is talking about driving people out of the country, rather than being welcoming to people coming in the country, and then to stand up and say, but I'm a person of faith. It makes your claim of faith suspect at best and a form of heresy at worst," Barber said.
Barber further said that the stories that Vance has admitted to making up about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, which the Republican candidate admitted to creating, were inherently against the spirit of the Constitution and should be disqualifying for voters.
"When you put your hand on the Constitution, you swear to uphold it. That means you swear to tell truth, and what you say is that you're going to be about establishing justice. Lying doesn't establish justice," Barber said. "When you put your hand on that constitution, or on a Bible, and swear to uphold that constitution you swear you're going to promote and provide for the common defense. When you lie on people and immigrants and others, you're not providing the common defense, and you certainly are not ensuring domestic tranquilities, because lies create confusion, and the lies that Vance is telling actually create hate."
Barber proposes debate format that puts facts first
Barber proposed in the interview that in the unlikely event that there is a second debate between Harris and Trump that the format should change.
The reverend proposed a format resembling a town hall with the wrinkle of a non-partisan expert on the topic providing the facts prior to any question being asked by a person affected by the topic.
"You put the facts out there up front, and then put a face on the facts," Barber said.
Barber noted that CBS moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan began some of their questions by citing sources, though the pair's only fact check of the night came when Vance returned to the stories about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio that the Republican candidate admitted to creating.
"When you're dealing with this level of lying and distortion, and when you're dealing with people who just want to run the clock out, they know they got two minutes, so they just talk, talk, talk, and they know that they are not going to have time to come back," Barber said. "You can't just present the same thing, because they didn't end up using the media. They use the debates to create more distortion and say things and make it look normal and really it's not."