The mayors are right:

More than 230 mayors are in Washington for the winter meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, and many said they had been forced to impose layoffs, furloughs, service reductions and fee increases to deal with falling municipal revenue. The next fiscal year looks even worse, they said.

“We are in the middle of a ‘jobs emergency’ that demands decisive and swift action,” said Elizabeth Kautz, the mayor of Burnsville, Minn., and president of the conference. “We need the Senate to pass a Main Street jobs package now.”

Mayor Kautz is a Republican, and while many Republicans in Congress oppose a second stimulus package, many of the Republican mayors here support it.

President Obama spoke before dozens of the mayors on Thursday, promising “a continued, sustained and relentless effort to create good jobs.”

In November, the latest month for which data is available, the jobless rate was up in all 363 of the cities surveyed by the conference, compared with the previous year. More than 105 metro areas have unemployment rates above 10 percent.

Even as recovery in the labor markets picks up steam in the next three years, unemployment rates will not return to pre-recession levels during that period for any metro area, the conference predicted.

“In the Great Depression they let up too soon and there was further recession,” Mayor Riley said. “Right now the president needs to avoid making that same mistake.”

Indeed, the first stimulus passed by Congress last year was too small. Obama's chair of the council of economic advisers, Christina Romer, had said the stimulus needed to be around $1.2 trillion or more to be most effective, rather than the compromised $700 billion package that was eventually passed. With that said, the first stimulus wasn't useless. It bailed out Florida from incompetent Republican legislative "leadersihp", and saved countless jobs, particularly teachers.

However, according to a recent report (.pdf) from the National League of Cities a $56 to $83 billion deficit is facing our cities. States, including our own, are facing down their own deficits. While progressives are urging Florida legislators to find new sources of revenue to overcome our latest $3 billion deficit, we could use one more package from the feds.

This need becomes more clear as people like future House Speaker and Senate President Dean Cannon and Mike Haridopolos go around crowing about how "the government doesn't create wealth."

Anyone who has a casual relationship with reality knows different. In fact, just 5 minutes with an American history book debunks Cannon and Haridopolos' far right pablum. The government (federal, state, local) employs millions of people, provides them benefits and discretionary income. This generates a great deal of economic prosperity boosting the private sector, and through an effective regulatory framework, can build shared prosperity. Duh.

So with Cannon and Haridopolos continuing the same failed economic policies of the Jeb Bush/Charlie Crist eras, we clearly need some responsible adults to step in. Whether it's a second stimulus or reforms making our state and local tax systems more productive and more progressive, our cities and states simply can't afford to shed jobs and programs in this recession.