Washington, DC
February 9, 2012

There were 18 Presidential Debates in 2011. There have been seven this year, making a total of 25. There are four already scheduled that will take place through March.

Mesa, Arizona, the home of our Second Vice President Mayor Scott Smith, welcomes the next debate on February 22 in the Mesa Arts Center.

By the end of March, we will have had 29 presidential debates.

There is a concern that the subject of the debates have been devoid and bereft of the issues of our people, the 84 percent of the American people who live in our metropolitan areas.

Rather, it’s been rather vicious and somewhat personal. Even when some of the persons in the audience have asked questions about housing, etc., there are no rational approaches offered to show us where the candidates stand today and what they would offer as solutions if they were to take the oath next January.

It is our hope that as the debates go forward and as the Republican primaries move toward more metro-urban/suburban states, our city people issues will be addressed. In the past on the Democratic side and the Republican side, and even with the Independent candidate, we have been successful at times in pushing our metro city issues forward. President Nixon’s general revenue sharing plan providing over $6.5 billion for flexible use to local governments was widely accepted by all mayors. Congress initially rejected it, McGovern rejected it, but Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, New York City Mayor John Lindsay, New

Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu and other mayors got McGovern to change his mind and his platform that year. And I, along with the distinguished African American Woman Mayor Jessie Rattley of Newport News, met with the top team of independent Presidential candidate George Wallace to get their support. If united, we can get the bipartisan political job done.

We have no way of knowing where the general election will take us once the Republican nominee comes swinging out of Tampa in August, and in September when President Obama comes forward and starts his march to November from the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.

But here’s what we do know and it is looking us straight in the face: President Obama, as Commander in Chief, working with Secretary of Defense Panetta are ending the war in Iraq.

Last week, President Obama declared that we must bring the money we are spending in Iraq home and half of it should go to deficit reduction and the other half of it should go to nation building here at home. That’s where we come in. That’s our opening.

We have to ask ourselves, where is The United States Conference of Mayors when the President of the United States challenges us to support and implement the long deferred and needed nation building plan for America to be funded with half of the money coming home from long war in Iraq? We have to come forward with a smart nation building plan, a plan that would put the war money in investments to make our daily lives more pleasant, more productive, and beneficial to our people.

Last June at our Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Conference President Villaraigosa led the nation’s mayors to support an end to the Iraq war and he coupled his support and eventually he got the majority of the mayors to support investments toward nation building in the post Iraq war era.

Since June, the Villaraigosa call and the Conference of Mayors resolve has moved forward and we are now in the Presidential campaign year that will take us again to the Presidential ballot box nine months from now.

As we gather our message for the Presidential candidates when President Villaraigosa convenes our 80th Annual Meeting on June 13, we will hear Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa again with a more specific charge and help design a plan for how the post Iraq war nation building money will be invested.

Conference President Antonio Villaraigosa will provide the American mayoral response this June in Orlando at our 80th Annual Meeting. Then, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will take the mayors nation building plan forward. Our Vice President Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, a Republican, will be beside him with strong support. And we will have all mayors supporting our USA Mayors Nation Building Plan as we go through the general election and beyond.

The United States Conference of Mayors gave its first Award for Distinguished Public Service, our highest award, to General George Marshall in The White House presented by President Truman in 1949. The award was given from USA mayors to General Marshall for his leadership in directing the USA national heroic and massive rebuilding of Europe, The Marshall Plan, after

World War 11. In 2012 we need a Marshall plan for nation building for our own country. We need to force the media to focus on this issue. We need to demand that all Presidential candidates address this issue now in the post Iraq war era.

Mayors must unite on this issue. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents must look to what one of our founders a Republican Maverick – the Little Flower, Fiorello La Guardia said, “There is not a partisan way to fill a pot hole!” He was our President for ten years. He, as a Republican, worked with President Franklin Roosevelt to rebuild our nation, to invest in our nation, following the Great War and The Great Depression.

This is another defining moment for The United States Conference of Mayors. Following the greatest recession since the Great Depression and our longest war, the nation’s mayors are led by a bipartisan team – Villaraigosa, Nutter, and Smith. Clint Eastwood says its half time. Let’s go for it in the third quarter and we know we will come back. It’s you, the mayors who are driving the metro economic engines our people have counted on since the meltdown of September 2008, who must challenge our leaders for a bold nation-building plan. We can do this. And let’s get started. I look forward to working with all of you as we develop, propose and adopt a sound plan of investment to rebuild America and provide jobs for so many who are jobless. Thank you for your continued strong support to your organization, The United States Conference of Mayors.