With the Super Bowl behind us, all eyes are now on New Hampshire, focused on round two of our flawed but entertaining process of selecting a new president. And with that there has been a great deal of talk of polls, who stumbled or did well in last debate and which campaign is targeting which opponent. It is horse-race analysis based on personalities and the often ridiculous claims the candidates have made.
What we should be demanding of them is answers to the front page of Sunday’s Herald.
The centerpiece was the introduction to a package of stories marking the six-month anniversary of the Gold King Mine spill with a photo of the orange-tainted Animas River last August. The secondary headline summed up the situation, saying, “Progress has been made, but answers and actions await.”
What is more, as the Herald also reported Sunday, Gold King is only one of at least 33,000 mines in the West and Alaska that are leaking contaminants. Cleaning up the whole mess is estimated to cost as much as $72 billion.
Below that was an Associated Press story reporting that the National Park Service, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, is short $12 billion for needed maintenance. Some $57 million of that is needed at Mesa Verde alone.
We are starting to talk real money here. Perhaps candidates Trump, Cruz, Sanders, Clinton and the rest could explain where that might come from – bearing in mind that these are real, demonstrated needs for projects of actual value.
Of course, mines and parks are just two instances where clean-ups and refurbished infrastructure are needed. Roads, bridges, schools, rail lines – the list is long and addressing all of it would be extraordinarily costly.
There is no quick and easy way to do all or even any of that. Fixing parks and mines alone would total more than $80 billion. And there are countless other things that can and probably should be done beyond shoring up infrastructure.
It would be helpful if our would-be presidents could at least speak to where they might start or how they would prioritize some of those needs. Instead, we get pie-in-the-sky nonsense about free health care and college for everyone and comic-book fantasies about walling out Latin America.
How about this for one suggested topic: Time magazine reported in January that the Congressional Research Service calculated that, considering everything, it costs $3.9 million to keep one soldier in Afghanistan for a year. It also points to a study by Harvard economist Linda Bilmes that estimated the total cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars could reach $6 trillion. Included in that is the care of wounded veterans and other such ongoing costs. That study was done in 2013 and the true cost cannot have decreased since.
How many days of war might it take to clean up after Gold King? Have we traded the Park Service for Iraq? What infrastructure needs are priorities? And what should be done about any of that going forward?
Whoever is left standing after New Hampshire should be asked questions like those. We have heard enough about fantasy football and Megyn Kelly.
