Former Vice President Joe Biden
U.S. Conference of Mayors
Washington, DC
January 24, 2019

Thank you very much.  You're very kind.  You must have been sitting a long time, that's why you're standing but thank you.  You know that famous phrase I remember as a student, reading about Adlai Stevenson running for president, he had a famous phrase.  He said flattery is fine as long as you don't inhale.

It's great to be back with you.  I've been with you, many, many times.  I want to say thanks to Steve.  Steve and I have known—your chairman have known each other for a long time.  He's done one hell of a job in Columbia.  And, you know, I was a local official. I ran for the United States Senate because being a local official was too hard.

Y'all think I'm kidding.  I'm not kidding.  They know where y'all live.  They know where you live.

And you effect, not a joke, you effect—

How you doing man, how are things down in Kentucky?

The fact of the matter is that you affect the quality of life. And you're viewed as the person most responsible for the quality of life in your city, more than anyone else in politics, more than anyone else in government.  You know, picking up the garbage, make sure it's picked up, is not Democrat or Republican, it's not a matter of whether or not you, if the streets aren't safe it doesnt matter what your politics are and if you don't have good schools, people are in trouble.  And you you've been, the whole world is sort of dropped on here. 

I look at, I want to thank Mayor Barnett and Mayor Fischer for the leadership in this conference, enabling me, inviting me to speak here today.  And I maybe it's just an Irish thing but you know this guy Walsh is okay too...a great, great personal friend and, you know, I've worked.

You know I've worked and this is not hyperbole, from the time I was a councilman to as Vice President. I don't think there's anybody who's work more closely with the mayor without being a mayor.

And I mean that sincerely because you are, the cities of America are the heartbeat of America. They are the economy of America.  Everything about what kind of nation we are can be determined by looking at our cities.  The rest of the nation is really important to state the obvious, rural areas suburban areas; but the heartbeat heartbeat of the country, are the mayors and and everything lands on your lap first instance, whatever it is, whatever it is.  And so, I've been to more conferences and I can count, and I've always learned something when I've come.  And I'm not, it's not hyperbole; I've been to probably thirty or more mayoral conferences.  And I've always walked away—and I'm not trying to be nice to you because you know, no one ever doubts I mean what I say. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean—and so, no one's ever accused me of being coy.   But I've always walked away impressed and no more so than as vice president being able to work with you.

You know when, you may remember some of you, that when, when the recession hit, I said this is the most significant economic crisis in American history short of a depression.  And it really was. And it turned out to be exactly what we thought it would be.  And in 2008 some of you weren't in office; a few of you were, a lot of you weren't but a few of you were.  And you may remember that the economy was in absolute freefall.  We, families lost over $16 trillion dollars in personal wealth. There were nearly 4 million homes that were lost.  And people who would find that they were in their home, and never missed a mortgage payment, everything was going fine, but all of a sudden they find their upside down because property values have dropped so much because of three foreclosures on your block.  And you now, your home was worth less than you owed the bank, and there were foreclosures that way too.  And that all happened on your streets. They're all happened—I spent an awful lot of time as vice president, the president gave me the honor and it was an honor of doing what we could to revive Detroit, in particular Detroit, because it was bankrupt at the time.  And, and, you know it's y'all went through, you all went through hell.  But, and we were losing 700,000 jobs a month.

Now my, my deceased wife, who was a brilliant woman named Neilia, she had a great expression, she said the greatest gift God gave mankind was the ability to forget.  And my mother would say that's true otherwise women would only have one child.  But, but all kidding aside, the good news is, and it is good, we've forgotten how bad it was particularly for our cities, a long time ago.

And so we went out, and you know the automobile industry was bankrupt.  And we wrote and passed with your leadership and I'm not being, it's not hyperbole, we passed the Recovery Act of 2009, and it literally saved us from sliding in a depression.

Even conservative economists now have acknowledged without that, that infusion of $836 billion, the single largest program in the history of America, maybe in the world, not a joke, of infusion of capital saved us from a depression.  And it was a single largest investment ever made.

And so I made the mistake that sometimes your staff may make with you.  I, I'm vice president of the United States.  I had, the president and I every single week had a private lunch where we could, we could talk about whether we wanted to, from our families to hollering at each other, and you know we're like, all kidding aside like brothers.  I mean it was completely open relationship we had.  And so one day I went in and with the help of a brilliant staffer named Ron Klain, I laid out  how I thought we should handle the Recovery Act.  And I never did it again.  He took the memo, he said great, do it, and slid it back down the dining room table.

But I did, the first thing I did, and it's just to remind you of where we've been and what you can do.  I went to you.  I went to the mayors.

I spoke to over 200 of you, and over that period of time in groups of as many as 30 or 40 on a phone to one or two alone.  And the truth of the matter is that you are the reason why—the mayors, the mayors and to some extent but not as much the governors—are the reason why we, we, we came through all this.  The reason I'm telling you that is that we're in a situation now where as a couple of my friends out there, I see that worked in our administration know, is that this is pretty dysfunctional town, to state the obvious.  I know that's a shock to hear somebody say that but.

But here's the deal.

The more dysfunctional this town has become, the more consequential local officials become.  Not a joke; it's reality, it's reality.  All the innovation in America is coming from the governors, the mayors, the county executives.  It'is coming up.  It literally is bubbling up.  It's the reason why we haven't seen much in my view—and I know, look.  I, I get in trouble.  I read in the New York Times today that I, that one of my problems is if I were to run for president. I like Republicans.  Okay, well bless me Father for I have sinned (does sign of cross).

But you know from where I come from, I don't know how you get anything done, I don't know how you get anything done, until we start talking to one another, again.  There's a big article today Fred, Fred Upton.  I went out and spoke at an event, and he was there and, and I praised him.  And he was in a race, but I praised him about the fight against cancer, his vote and his ability to join me, in the, there's a Cures Act that was passed that was over, turns out over eight and a half billion dollars to fight cancer.  And it mattered, saved people's lives, and he stepped up, he and three other Republicans stepped up and helped us pass it.  And so I acknowledged that and now I'm I don't know what I am.

Anyway, the point of the matter is that at your level, where the rubber meets the road, I don't find a lot of distinction between the problems Republican governors, I mean mayors face, and Democratic mayors face.  We have different philosophies, but we want to get things done.  And you know, at the time, when this God awful recession hit, it wasn't just your infrastructure was in shambles, it wasn't all the things, you know, and the impacts on employment in your cities and the like, but your schools were shutting down.  Remember, remember you couldn't pay your teachers, remember there were thousands of school districts that were in real trouble, that were talking about doubling the size of classes because there was not enough money to keep the teachers employed.

So we came along in that Act and and Barack and I actually sat down and wrote that in the interregnum period to try to figure out how to change government a little bit.  We, we decided that we put—we put 97, $97 billion into the schools, the single largest infusion of money in education, any single time in American history.  $97 billion and it kept your schools open, kept people, their education from falling behind and losing a year or two.

But the point I'm making is that you guys did it and saved 368,000 teachers jobs.  But you implemented it, you implemented it.  And you know that we invested $48 billion, $48 billion in infrastructure projects, we built 42,000 miles of highways and 2,700 bridges.

I remember getting a call from, at the time the Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, talking about two cities, which were literally divided by stream or creek and a bridge you couldn't cross with a fire engine.  So people were losing lives. It took another 25 minutes to get around to get to where the fire was.  It was only, if you could cross the bridge, a matter of five minutes.  And so, but you were the ones that came forward with the ideas that were needed to revitalize your cities. And we had a thing called TIGER grants, $5.1, billion for 421 projects, the money went directly to mayors, directly to your communities because one of the things we wrote into the law was you didn't have to go through the legislature to get this.  You didn't have to go in and have it divided up 75 different ways.  It went one straight to the mayors, straight to the mayors.

In St. Paul, Minnesota Mayor Carter knows one of those grants helped the Union Depot and revitalize the hub of public transportation in that city.  It was a $35 million grant, but since that grant, the mayor and his successors and everyone in thar city, it reopened and it added $2.2. billion in private investment.  It leveraged $2.2 billion in private investment, has flowed into the neighborhoods.  It's a different part of town.

I don't know if Mayor Duggan is here, but if Mayor Duggan from Detroit is here he can tell you what's happened in downtown Detroit.  By minor investments by the federal government that had phenomenal impact on what he was able to attract.  And the point of, you know, you have like I said, you have at the Depot you now have a farmers market, a new minor league ballpark, families go out there on the weekend and look, again, the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accounting Office did a study about how well you all managed the money we gave you.

Less than two tenths of 1% was wasted, or was fraudulent, less than two tenths of 1%.  The largest government program in history with less than two tenths of 1% waste, fraud or abuse in the program.

Now, okay, Biden why are you going back on this magical, mystical tour here, you know what happened before?  Well, we worked together.  Recovery Act required us Democrats, Republicans, presidents, vice presidents, mayors, senators, governors to work together because our back was against the wall.

And the end result of this was we have 75 straight months of economic growth, the longest in American history.  Added 15 million jobs.

You brought the unemployment rate down, you brought the unemployment rate down from 10% to 4.8% by '17, and it's now down even lower.  The point I raise in this is, in order to get something done, I know where to go.

We should know where to go; we gotta go to the mayors, gotta go home, not a joke.  And two you got to remember, which bothers me today—  I know I'm referred to when we're in the White House, as the White House optimist like as my grandfather would say, like I fell off the turnip truck yesterday.  You know, I've been there longer than all of them.  But the reason I'm optimistic, I know the history of the journey this country.

And folks are walking around with our heads bowed too much, walking around with Oh my god, how can we handle these problems we face?  What are we going to do?  We're in my real trouble.

We are in trouble, but we were in so much more trouble in the past.

There's a simple proposition.  The American people are capable doing anything—give them an even chance.  They've never ever ever ever ever let us down.

That's why I'm coming to you.  Because the fact of the matter is, we need to re establish this partnership which has fallen by the wayside.  I don't know how many times you've been to the White House.  I don't know how many times you had the White House intervene to come tell you how they're going to help the cities.  Maybe a lot I hope, but I haven't seen much of it.  I haven't seen much of it.

It's like we've divided the country into, into pieces.

How can we be one America if we continue down this road.

I don't care what your party affiliation is.  This isn't just a partnership between the federal government and city governments.  It's a partnership with the private sector as well.

Embedded in the Recovery Act was the single biggest investment in clean energy in the history of the country.  $90 billion dollars.  It leveraged $150 billion in the private sector money.

The investment helped to help create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs in the years that followed.  By the end of the administration we were generating 30 times as much solar energy as you did, and creating energy jobs at a rate 12 times faster than any other sector of the economy.  And a lot of this happened with you.  Mayor Caldwell, you know what it meant to people of Honolulu.  You're leading the nation right now in solar per person, solar watts per person.

You don't have to go through your tough neighborhoods and wonder why the asthma rates are higher.

Why in fact there's more illness.

Why in fact there's still lead paint in the wall, that mercury makes a difference whether or not you are going to extend your life or limit the time of your life.

You guys see it.  You know it; you don't have to be a scientist.

You know what happens, you know what the plume off of the energy plant, what it does to neighborhoods, what it does to people, but you see it every day.

You see it in hospital admissions, in your hospitals.

Look folks, the fact of the matter is that this is all within our wheel.

You know, we went out there, and we more than tripled wind generation.  Today we generate wnd power for 24 million homes.  There's no reason why we can't quadruple that virtually overnight.  This is no longer rocket science.

We figured out how to have solar energy as cheap per kilowatt produced as gas.

We helped install 16 million meters in your cities and towns to make it easy for people to save energy, weatherize millions of homes, saving 3,000 bucks a year for people.

Most of us come from neighborhoods where we weren't all that wealthy, were not necessarily poor.  But let me tell you something.  $3,000 a year means  difference between you can pay your insurance, keep your kid in a community college whether or not you're going to be able to get that new sink, whether you have to put four new tires on the car.  I don't know where these people live.  They don't live in the neighborhoods I grew up in.

We weren't poor.  We lived in a nice neighborhood, when suburban sprawl was occurring.  Three bedroom house, [inaud.] four kids and and a grandpop.  But it was safe, and good schools.

But tell you what.  It mattered whether you had an extra thousand dollars a year or $2,000 a year in very practical things.

So what we did was, when these investments we made, we nderstood along in your urging and I don't know how many mayors I sat with in large groups, talking about this as an opportunity.  Help me change my street lights, I can save X amount of energy.  Help me move to having all my buses run on propane or natural gas.  Figure out a way to help me figure out how to do blah blah blah.

And it's, it's mattered; it's had a profound impact.

Ten years ago we knew we needed a green revolution.  We understood the urgency in terms of people's health, in terms of economic growth, in terms of the quality of life.  And with you all we put the country on a path.  We reduced carbon emissions from power plants by one third, that was the goal in the next 10 years, increased renewable energy by 30% with a goal of being able to do it by 50 and then 90% within the near term.

There's no reason that in 2025, all in North America can't get half of its electricity from non polluting sources.  It's within our grasp, but for special interests. [very loud]

We need to reset these goals for our children and our grandchildren.  The administration has walked away, but there's no reason we can't pull us back on the path.

There's unanimity in my party; the vast majority Republicans agree and they support the goals as well.

They got a more of a political problem; I'm not being a wise guy.  They got more of a problem with administration.  But every single one of you know that investing in clean energy gives your city a chance to grow and create jobs.  But you also know this is about more than that.  It's about a matter of survival.  The threat posed by climate change is existential.  You know the first meeting we had I what we called the tank, over in the Pentagon, Barack and I, as  new president and vice president and getting briefed.  You know what the military said our greatest security threat is?  Global warming.  The military.  The military.

Simple reason.  Sea levels rise a half a foot or a foot, you have tens of millions of people migrating.  [very loud]

That's how wars start.  That's how Darfur started.  It matters.  And you're seeing elements of this in your cities, and I see it my own state.  Delaware has the lowest average elevation of any state in the country.  We're an average 60 feet above sea level.

Our state department of natural resources in conjunction with the federals, with the feds, and the environmental control agency, said by the end of the century—that's a long time so it's hard for anybody to fathom that—eight to 11% of my state will be underwater, homes destroyed, jobs lost towns off the map.

I was down in Rehoboth Beach Delaware, some of you from this area may know where that is on the ocean.  And when the EPA report came out talking about how sea levels are rising. Next thing I see, literally the same day, is the National Realtors on the air saying we've heard these warnings before.  Don't worry.  Buy on the beach.  Not a joke.

So folks, this is real.  I don't have to tell you that.  But the fact of the matter is that you're on the ground every day. You see it; hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, mud slides.

Mayor Adler you saw it in Austin.  Record rainfall led to sediment clogging up your city's water treatment system.  That didn't happen before.

You saw it in Denver.  Mayor Hancock for last year the heat wave was so extreme, it was literally being dangerous for people to be inside, without air conditioning.  Our government's own most recent report found that heat stress and drought kill off up to a quarter of our corn, can kill off up to a quarter of our corn and soybean harvest.

What's that going to mean for your mayors from the Midwest, from Iowa, from Kansas, from Nebraska?  What happens?  What happens in Dubuque when John Deere has nothing to plow?  Not a joke.

EPA has spoken, they've laid all this out.  Our scientists have spoken.  There's no dispute about this among scientists.  Since when did we become science deniers?  The United Nations told us, whether you agree with the exact number, that we have 12 years to act before it's irreversible.  So say it's ten years or 20 years.

Nobody's disputing if we fail to act, we're going to have a serious, more serious problem.  Until the world is destabilized by food and security disasters, until they lose trillions of dollars in the fallout, until devastation we've already seen terrifying clumps of becomes a new normal.

Maybe that's the only thing that's going to change people's minds, but we really have, I believe and I hope you do, we have to put the country back together.  When we pulled out of the climate, the Paris Climate Agreement, 400 of you said, not us.  Republicans, Democrats, said not us.  Not my city.  We're going to meet the standard.  Governors across the nation said, not us.  We're not going to do it.

We established the first ever limits on carbon emissions from power plants. Double fuel economy standards of passenger vehicles have 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025—would have saved families and businesses and cities almost $2. trillion.  These are economic models—$2. trillion. 

One of the proudest achievements our administration was leading the passage and Barack did it, of the Paris agreement, which prompted every single country in the world to commit to reducing greenhouse gases.  Every single one has but us, every country in the world.

In the last two years this administration has walked away from the progress you made, they've walked away.  But you stepped up as I said.  The United States, we backed out of the agreement, but 400 of you said no, no, not me.  Conference of Mayors survey, last fall you all did, 57% of you said you plan to take action in 2019.  A hundred cities and towns have committed to transition to renewable energy... to say that move away from fossil fuels, renewable power, which is within our power.  It's the equivalent of taking 26 million cars off the road.  30 coal fired plants. Now I'm beginning to sound like a wonk I hate.

But look. The point is, this is really important.  And it's within our power, it's within our power to stem this erosion.  You know you banded together to purchase more electric vehicles to provide cleaner air to reduce to reduce oil dependence.  Last year one, the one millionth electric vehicle was sold in the United States.

Ten years ago, when we rescued the automobile industry, today Ford and GM are intent on being the world's leaders in electric vehicles.  How many of you have taken action to put recharging stations in your city, where your parking meters are?  Forty-eight electric vehicle charging corridors in American highways Barack and I laid out before we left.

But just when we opened up, just like we have enough gas stations in the 1920s, we need towns to lead the way as well, cities and towns.  Mayor Brown is getting it done in Buffalo.  Who's going to step up next?  We need leaders who understand this is the most urgent priority facing the nation, and that we'll be judged by our children and grandchildren on what we do today.  You deserve a strong federal partner.

This nation cannot continue down this blind path.  We cannot ignore science, we cannot abdicate our duty to lead the world.  We can't stand alone in ignorance, while every other country in the world signs on an agreement.  Because the simple truth is the American people are with us in this issue.  Democrats, Republicans independents, they understand the reality is; the younger generation understands it even more.  And they're demanding action.

So my plea to you is hang in there.  We need you.  You're literally Horatio at the bridge attempting to hold back the threat that is to wipe out the progress we've made and the commitments we made.

I'm telling you that help is on the way.  This position cannot be sustained.  But you are the key.  You are the key to keeping it from sliding all the way back to what it was before you did all the things you did during the Recovery Act.  Together I'm absolutely confidence we can do this.

And folks, parting comment.

I think we got to start to begin to believe in our people again.  They're tougher than you think they are.  They're ready to do great things.  They're looking to be led.

Every one of you, my guess, was raised like I was to believe there wasn't anything you couldn't do, there wasn't a damn thing in the world America couldn't do.

This is United States of America for God's sake.  It's time to lift our heads up, man, not walk around staring at the ground, and take these on.  This is all within our wheelhouse, and you've demonstrated more than any other group of elected officials in the United States of America.

God bless you for what you do. and may God protect our troops.  Thank you.

[About 29 minutes]