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A Way Out for the MTA: How Can the Capital Plan Be Funded?

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Over and over again, you hear pandering state politicians call for a “forensic audit” of the MTA, perhaps hoping that given the general level of corruption among the supposed truth telling professions in recent decades, if they paid for the audit the audit would absolve them. But for any other purpose, I can save them the money the audit would cost. The MTA is going broke for the same reason that the state’s Transportation Trust Fund, which is supposed to pay for road and bridge repairs, is going broke. The maintenance and normal replacement of the infrastructure is an ongoing expense, not a one time “capital” expense. Stop it, and your infrastructure deteriorates and eventually collapses. But rather than pay what that maintenance and normal replacement costs each year, or work to get the cost down while still getting the work done, the state decided to spend not just today’s money on today’s work, but tomorrow’s money on today’s work as well. Leaving no money for tomorrow, which is now today.

The short answer to the question “how can the MTA capital plan be funded” is that it should be funded with the dedicated tax revenues already authorized for the MTA. The MTA projects its debt service costs will rise toward $3 billion per year in the next few years – more than enough to pay for its ongoing capital needs if the debts were paid for otherwise. Particularly given my prior statement that subway and commuter rail riders should pay to purchase new rail cars on an ongoing basis as part of their fares, and federal aid is likely to remain available to purchase buses because buses are present everywhere in the U.S. So the real question isn’t how the capital program should be funded. The real question is how should all the illegitimate debt from the past be paid for, and should it be paid for at all? Because without that debt service and other costs from the past, the MTA would have all the money it ought to need.

The Call Of Liberalism

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It was not a rejection of liberalism but perhaps a rejection of America’s excesses in the late 60s and 70s whereas liberalism just happened to be in power on both sides of the political aisle at the time and so took the blame though without fault.

So this excess this hedonism gave rise to conservatism even among progressives. But it was not a rejection of a political belief but of excess.

Americans still believed in helping one another, in social security and medicare and paying taxes as part of collective whole for the benefit of all.

Will The President Stand Up To Generation Greed and Up for the Future?

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President Obama is going to announce his deficit ideas today during the mid-day, not during prime time. I wonder if he will talk about what no politician and virtually no political outlet was willing to talk about. The Ryan plan would have provided an even richer Medicare program for those 55 and over, Generation Greed, funded by 30 more years of rising debts. And paid for those debts with far more drastic reductions in benefits for future generations than would otherwise be the case. The Democratic and Republican politicians immediately yelled “tax the rich,” “choice and efficiency,” private vs. public, because they would rather talk about that. Than have the mostly 55 and over politicians talk about what they all agree on.

The President is from the second half of the baby boom, the first of a long line of generations (aside from the rich and retired public employees) to be worse off than the one before. He was elected primarily with the support of the young, whereas the Republican majority in the house was swept in by seniors angry about the limitations on growth of Medicare spending under health care reform. Is it too much to ask the holder of our highest office to take a moral stand, that what we can afford for those 55 and over today and what we can afford for my children 50 years from now are one and the same?

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