taxing andspending at all.
And in the next breath, those same furious folkswill say that we are robbing the generations ahead by burdening them with alegacy of debt.
What would be left to future generations if thepublic functions symbolized by stimulus spending simply disappeared? What willthe future be if government doesn't repair and transform the roads, bridges,sewers, power grids, reservoirs, levees, airports, railways, subways, schools,parks, colleges and hospitals that we are leaving to our children in much worseshape than they were left to us? How will those facilities serve the future ifthey are disintegrating today?
The collapse of American infrastructure is ashamefully old story by now, featuring scary statistics that must be updatedregularly as the situation worsens. President Obama's stimulus legislationappropriated nearly $100 billion for highways, transit, schools, parks, waterand other public facilities, but its real purpose was to stoke immediateeconomic activity rather than long-term infrastructure improvements. The aimwas to create and save jobs right away and to provide relief to state and localgovernments and working families. Its provisions for infrastructure hardlybegan to address actual needsas the president would certainly acknowledge.
Estimates of those needs simply dwarf the amountsthat successive governments have found available to meet them.
Tax Cuts Won't Solve the Problem
To keep roads and bridges in decent repairthat is,to bring them back to the condition of previous decades and keep them fromfalling downwe would have to spend $166 billion a year for the next fiveyears. To maintain the standards of purity required by the Clean Water Act, wewould need to spend at least $500 billion more than currently planned over thecoming two decades. To improve transit sufficiently to meet increasing demandin a carbon-choked world, we should spend an additional $25 billion every year.To create the world-class rail systems enjoyed by our European competitorsandcurrently under construction by the Chinesewe would be looking at anotherhundred billion dollars or so over the coming decade.
Without substantial investment in those sectors, theAmerican future looks dim. Our capacity to compete with other countries willcontinue to shrink. Our daily lives will be increasingly consumed by trafficdelays, airport slowdowns, transit breakdowns and all the myriad problemsinherent in a crumbling, overcrowded and inadequate public sector.
Our health and safety will be endangered by pollutedwater and air, as well as falling bridges, uncontrolled flooding,pothole-marked roads and derailed trains. Our educational and intellectualadvantages will undergo a similar decline, as school enrollments keep climbingwhile budgeting for new and renovated buildings keeps falling.
So the politicians and television personalities whorant constantly against government and insist that tax cuts are the onlypriority and oppose every attempt to restore the very things that laid thefoundation of our prosperity are worse than irresponsible. They are liketermites, gnawing away at the remarkable legacy left to our generation, onethat we must pass on. They are willing, even eager, to squander trillions ofdollars on wars abroad, no matter how dubious, and then waste trillions more on"defense" pork that benefits only their donors.
For those dubious purposesand to cut the taxes ofthe wealthy, of coursethey are willing to borrow money from abroad. Butrevitalizing the nation and preserving our common heritage for ourchildrenthose are necessities we supposedly cannot afford.
But we cannot afford to ignore these needs. It is acrime to use up the past and leave only memories of a better time. Finding theways and means to rebuild Americais an economic necessity todayand a moral obligation to those who will followus.
© 2010Creators.com.
