WORRYING ABOUT THE GRANDCHILDREN

Some of the Republicans are alarmed all of a sudden
about the huge and growing federal debt. These are
the folks urging more and deeper tax cuts also. They
voted for huge tax cuts under Mr. Bush while running
our national debt over $10 trillion! Joseph Stiglitz,
formerly chief economist for the World Bank, has toted
up the costs for our Iraq misadventure as approaching
$3 trillion and counting.

Now they are showing all the zeal of new converts in
their concern for "fiscal responsibility." They have
completely forgotten their past sins. Their plea now
is to consider what the mountain of debt will mean for
the future. Sen. Gregg says the Obama budget will
"devastate future economic opportunities for our chil-
dren and grandchildren." Sen. Mc Cain calls it "genera-
tional theft."

Yes, there has been wasteful spending, for sure. The
Iraq debacle has been money and lives down a rat hole.
The same for "star wars," the unworkable missle de-
fense fiasco that has wasted billions. And we keep
building aircraft carriers, submarines, and models of
fighter planes that are redundant, and unneeded.

The real "generational theft" that will "devastate future
economic opportunies for our children and grandchildren"
are the tragic and criminal neglect of our infrastructure,
environment, education and health delivery systems. The
"deferred maintenance" on roads, bridges, dams -- all
public facilities in fact -- has happened on the watch of
these frugal freddies who hate spending on anything but
weapons and earmarks. They have brought the nation
to the verge of ruin by sheer neglect! That's how much
they really care about our kids and their kids.

Felix Rohatyn has written a powerful, much-needed book
called Bold Endeavors. In it he tells "How Our Govern-
ment Built America, And Why It Must Rebuild Now." He
shows how government investment during and following
the Great Depression put millions of people to work on
roads, dams, conservation, and public buildings that be-
came national assets of great and lasting value. There's
good spending and bad spending. President Eisenhower
had to fight his own Republican Party to build the Inter-
State Highway system. Can you imagine where we would
be today without it? The American Legion fought hard to
get the G. I. Bill through a Congress that was initially
opposed to it. Peter Drucker has said that the G. I. Bill
did more than any other factor to bring the great prosperity
that followed WW II. It elevated a whole generation into
the professions and the educated middle class, and helped
millions of people buy their first homes. That's gov't spen-
ding that counts!

What kind of country have the spending haters left us
with? Says Felix Rohatyn (in the work cited): "The nation
is falling apart -- literally. America's roads and bridges,
schools and hospitals, airports and railways, ports and dams,
waterlines and air-control systems -- the country's entire
infrastructure -- is rapidly and dangerously deteriorating."
Care about your grandchildren? This is what you should be
thinking about.

Consider these facts, urges Rohatyn: "In a report issued in
2005 the statistics compiled by the American Society of
Civil Engineers (ASCE) document a grim story, and predict
a dangerous future. Twenty-seven percent of the nation's
590,750 bridges, for example, are 'structurally deficient or
functionally obsolete'; repairing these conditions would cost
$9.4 billion a year over the next twenty years."

Water facilities need an $11 billion annual investment. $268
billion will be needed to restore schools. Congested roads
cause motorists to spend 3.5 billion hours in traffic each
year at a cost of $63.2 billion in wasted time and fuel. "Over
the next five years," says Rohatyn, "to bring America's in-
frastructure to reasonably safe standards will require a $1.6
trillion investment." Those kinds of investments produce
lasting assets to everyone's benefit, including our children
and grandchildren.

Yes the growing national debt is a huge concern. Nancy
Folbre, a professor of economics at the Univ. of Mass. wrote
an op. ed. column in the NYT (4/2/09) entitled "The Gran-
daddy State." In it she notes that the Congressional Budget
Office has projected that government debt held by the pub-
lic will rise from 42% of GDP in 2008 to 82% in 2019. She
says that in 1946, right after the end of WW II, debt held
by the public represented 109% of GDP. "Borrowing that
money helped us escape the Depression and win the war,
laying the foundation for a long postwar boom. Of course,
that doesn't necessarily mean that economic growth will
resume for us." Prof. Folbre points out that "borrowing
creates assets as well as liabilities -- and future genera-
tions will inherit both. It's the relationship between assets
and liabilities that matters most."