(Neal Peirce is a syndicated columnist who writes about local government issues. His columns do not reflect the opinions of County News or NACo.)

Critics of the administration’s $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut argue it’s a highly risky move, unsupported by public opinion, pushed by a president who lost the national popular vote and lacks any clear public mandate.

But there’s another objection: This pot of great wealth — to the extent it truly exists — isn’t the property of Mr. Bush, or Congress. It’s our money. We made it. We ought to be in on the debate over how much we want returned to us. And how much, alternatively, we’d want invested in critical needs, in research to boost productivity and in infrastructure to prepare our neighborhoods and regions for 21st century demands.

What’s more, there’s extra peril in mega-tax cuts when economists agree that grim deficits are waiting not far outside the 10-year budget window — right in the spot, notes Julie Kosterlitz in National Journal, “where baby boomers will be unfolding their lawn chairs,” waiting for their Social Security checks.

Premise for the debate we deserve: This is the decade, after our serious ’80s and ’90s relapse in spending for basic infrastructure, to make the grand investments that will pay off for decades in increased productivity.

How about a big investment in energy conservation technologies, especially in view of the California and Western shortages?

Or how about the list of nearly $1 trillion in overdue infrastructure from the ’90s?

The wish list included $360 billion to fix deteriorating highways and bridges; $72 billion to improve mass transit systems; as much as $60 billion to expand and modernize airports; $112 billion to bring America’s seriously aging, insufficient supply of public schools up to minimum standards; $139 billion for wastewater systems over two decades.

Or why not move now to offset our constantly worsening highway gridlock and airport winglock by investing $10 billion to $20 billion a year in a first-class national rapid rail network that connects our major urban centers on exclusive rights-of-way, emulating the superb systems in Europe, Japan and elsewhere?

Despite the stock market’s recent fall, contends Jim RePass, president of the National Corridors Initiative, “We are living in the wealthiest society, in the wealthiest land, in the history of Planet Earth. If we don’t build our infrastructure now, when will we?”

Not only is it in the American character to do a grand undertaking, says RePass, but rails have been totally neglected since World War II. Rebuild them in the next years, he argues, with airport connections automatically included. We could relieve pressure on our airports 25 percent to 35 percent, extend airports’ useful lives for decades, provide Americans with an alternative to ever-more-terrifying big-rig-packed interstates, cut costs and add to national productivity through less expensive ways to move goods from region to region.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors and other top urban leaders get the point — they’ve made a world-class rail system one of their top priorities. With traffic congestion bleeding billions from the national economy each year, argues Chattanooga Councilman David Crockett, the nation needs a rail plan as bold as was the interstate system when President Eisenhower first advanced it in the 1950s.

Eisenhower, notes Crockett, “didn’t start with a few miles to test. Instead he said we’d look at all the nation’s roads, move beyond a parkway here or there, and build a nationwide interstate system.” Result: an interstate road grid that “transformed the ways and places Americans live, commute and travel, settle communities, sell goods.”

We need a move as transformational right now, argue Crockett and others.

Whether it’s railroads, bridges or waterworks, there is an appropriate debate — how much federal, how much state-local financing?

Plus, it’s fair to demand that states and metropolitan regions develop full reporting systems, including predictors of whether proposed infrastructure spending will meet such reinvented government criteria as cost-effectiveness and positive return on investment, suggests Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

But do we hear a debate in Washington on these critical issues? No!

Nor are national policymakers discussing which kinds of infrastructure investments, under what terms and rules, can actually boost national productivity and position the national economy to grow competitively over the next years.

From the early canals to transcontinental railroads to the space program, national investments drove economic development. How about now?

Also missing, a debate about what kinds of human investments — especially in our poor and children — can bolster U.S. society for the new century.

These are discussions a 21st century president should be initiating and pursuing, right now, intensely, with Congress and with his state and local partners. But this president is turning a tin ear to our future.

(Neil Peirce’s e-mail address is npeirce@citistates.com.)