Letter: Infrastructure woes left to our children

Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2007 | 7:20 a.m.

Reading Ann McFeatters' Aug. 6 column headlined "U.S. not spending what it needs to fix broken infrastructure," I was taken aback by her last sentence, "But these days, our national motto seems to be: 'We'd rather pay later.' "

"We"? Oh, really? Who is "we"?

She writes, "The nation's overall problem of disintegrating pipes, bridges, ports, dams, rails and roads ... " must be handled with "long-range plans and timetables ... " Indeed.

The operative word is "long-range."

In other words, in effect it isn't "we" who are going to be paying for all this. It is going to be our children, grandchildren and beyond. Today's middle-aged and older generations have been getting a free ride on existing infrastructure paid for by an earlier generation. Failing to set aside over the decades money in an infrastructure national trust fund for future replacement while using the existing infrastructure, we in effect have passed the replacement costs on to future generations.

Today's mature generation didn't pay for building the infrastructure and it isn't going to pay for replacing it. It got a free lunch - at the expense of yesterday's and tomorrow's generation s .

Future generations will be burdened with not only having to partially support their retired senior citizens (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and such), but also having to pay off the national debt (another free lunch) and for replacing the national infrastructure , in addition to paying their own daily expenses and saving for their own retirement.

David Peace, Henderson