If there is any subject that enrages those who now call themselves conservatives, it is federal spending — and especially the stimulus program enacted by the Democratic administration and Congress last year. The government can do nothing right, they say. The stimulus was pure waste that created no jobs at all. The country would be better off without Washington taxing and spending at all.
And in the next breath, those same furious folks will say that we are robbing the generations ahead by burdening them with a legacy of debt.
What would be left to future generations if the public functions symbolized by stimulus spending simply disappeared? What will the 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 worse shape than they were left to us? How will those facilities serve the future if they are disintegrating today?
The collapse of American infrastructure is a shamefully old story by now, featuring scary statistics that must be updated regularly as the situation worsens. President Obama’s stimulus legislation appropriated nearly $100 billion for highways, transit, schools, parks, water and other public facilities, but its real purpose was to stoke immediate economic activity rather than long-term infrastructure improvements. The aim was to create and save jobs right away and to provide relief to state and local governments and working families. Its provisions for infrastructure hardly began to address actual needs — as the president would certainly acknowledge.
Estimates of those needs simply dwarf the amounts that successive governments have found available to meet them.
To keep roads and bridges in decent repair — that is, to bring them back to the condition of previous decades and keep them from falling down — we would have to spend $166 billion a year for the next five years. To maintain the standards of purity required by the Clean Water Act, we would need to spend at least $500 billion more than currently planned over the coming two decades. To improve transit sufficiently to meet increasing demand in a carbon-choked world, we should spend an additional $25 billion every year. To create the world-class rail systems enjoyed by our European competitors — and currently under construction by the Chinese — we would be looking at another hundred billion dollars or so over the coming decade.
Without substantial investment in those sectors, the American future looks dim. Our capacity to compete with other countries will continue to shrink. Our daily lives will be increasingly consumed by traffic delays, airport slowdowns, transit breakdowns and all the myriad problems inherent in a crumbling, overcrowded and inadequate public sector.
Our health and safety will be endangered by polluted water and air, as well as falling bridges, uncontrolled flooding, pothole-marked roads and derailed trains. Our educational and intellectual advantages will undergo a similar decline, as school enrollments keep climbing while budgeting for new and renovated buildings keeps falling.
So the politicians and television personalities who rant constantly against government insist that tax cuts are the only priority and oppose every attempt to restore the very things that laid the foundation of our prosperity are worse than irresponsible. They are like termites, gnawing away at the remarkable legacy left to our generation, one which we must pass on. They are willing, even eager, to squander trillions of dollars on wars abroad, no matter how dubious, and then waste trillions more on “defense” pork that benefits only their donors.
For those dubious purposes — and to cut the taxes of the wealthy, of course — they are willing to borrow money from abroad. But revitalizing the nation and preserving our common heritage for our children — those are necessities we supposedly cannot afford.
But we cannot afford to ignore these needs. It is a crime to use up the past and leave only memories of a better time. Finding the ways and means to rebuild America is an economic necessity today — and a moral obligation to those who will follow us.
Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer (www.observer.com).
Copyright 2010 Creators.com
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.