NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — Ronald DeFeo, chief executive officer of Westport, Conn.-based Terex Corp., on Tuesday joined the granddaughter of a president and a congressman in calling for a new mission in America to fix and improve our infrastructure.

The nation, DeFeo said, was created by visionaries who built the transcontinental railroad, the Hoover Dam and the highway system. But Americans have done little to maintain and improve that infrastructure for years.

DeFeo helped organize a conference on infrastructure Tuesday at his alma mater, Iona College, here.

"We do have a great country and we want it to stay a great country," said DeFeo, whose company builds construction equipment. "It needs vision. It needs planning. It needs leadership."

For his generation in particular, he said, this is becoming a dire situation.

If the baby boomers do not do something now, according to DeFeo, they will go down in history as a "user generation."

Susan Eisenhower, one of the keynote speakers, echoed that sentiment shortly after getting off the stage.

"What I worry about is that our generation has left this a much worse place than we found it," Eisenhower said.

Eisenhower is the granddaughter of President Eisenhower, who proposed and signed into law the creation of the U.S. interstate highway system in the 1950s. Susan Eisenhower, a strategist and consultant on business, public affairs and political projects, was one of the conference's featured speakers.

She

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laid out a grim picture of the condition of U.S. infrastructure.

During the years she's studied infrastructure, Eisenhower said she found aging systems in space as well as on the ground. She said most of the satellites used to transmit financial and other data are nearing the end of their life cycles.

But the biggest failing might be the people, according to Eisenhower and others at the conference.

The general tone of many speakers suggested a society of immediacy has evolved in America, where planning doesn't go beyond the next congressional election cycle or next quarterly report.

Eisenhower proposed the country create an infrastructure strategy commission or board tasked with tackling long-range planning. To assist in this, the members would have terms of 20 years or more.

Like DeFeo, she said doing this requires leadership. Eisenhower, the Republican granddaughter of a Republican president, has endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama for president.

U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., also called for more leadership, not just from the president but from his own colleagues who refuse to cooperate with each other.

In the late 1950s, Congress passed by voice vote a 1-cent increase to the gas tax to help fund the highway system, he said.

"You can't pass the house prayer on a voice vote today," he said.

No one said solving this crisis will be easy, but the trick is to actually get some solutions moving forward, according to the speakers.

While the U.S. dithers, Oberstar said, the rest of the world is investing in its infrastructure and growing their economies. And perhaps in this, Oberstar and others see a chance to reawaken the American spirit.

"We need a return to the sense of mission," he said, that propelled America forward in the past.