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I object.

It's not that I couldn't use an extra 600 bucks, or that there aren't a whole bunch of things I could easily spend it on. Who couldn't? That's not the point. And neither is the tanking economy.

That $150 billion tax rebate package that President Bush requested and Congress couldn't wait to approve frankly just isn't worth compromising Justine's and Liberty's future. After all, haven't we already put them deep in fiscal harm's way?

Who is Justine? Who is Liberty? Why, my future granddaughters. They don't exist, of course. They might never exist. But they are representative of, and thus just as real as, the millions of America's future granddaughters and grandsons and great-grandchildren who will exist — and who desperately need an advocate to defend them against the America mob.

The mob? That's me and you, my fellow, greedy Americans. Where is our collective conscience? Did we learn nothing from the "greatest generation"? Are we really going to continue to feather our own nests at the expense of future Americans?

Collectively, we're allowing Bush and Congress to continue to conspire and lay waste to the economic promise of America's future kids. Bush & Co. are piling up debt faster than a drunken sailor at a Vegas craps table.

Haven't they done enough to cripple future generations with our problems? With their record budget deficits of $400 billion or more each year, they have created an unfathomable $9.2 trillion national debt. It's nearing double what it was when Bush first entered the Oval Office seven years ago.

Haven't they wasted enough money on a meaningless war and occupation in Iraq, a war that has achieved little, if anything, worthy of this great nation?

Those generations didn't get to vote on any of this. But they will end up burdened with the real costs, the dollars and cents, of our worst failure — our most expensive war and the biggest mistake in U.S. foreign policy history.

When it's all added up — the off-budget war and the tax rebates that will push the current and next year's budget deficits once again above $400 billion — all Americans will face a $10 trillion national debt.

By what right do we mortgage their future, by taking "economic stimulus" bribes from an administration that easily is the most fiscally irresponsible in history.

So, I'm shaking my finger at you, on their behalf. In the name of liberty and justice, I object. So should you.

Remember that when you get your tax "rebate" check, its really not yours, and it is a gross misnomer to call it a rebate. If you spend it, you're actually spending your grandchildren's future, because the cost of it will be added onto their tab for our excesses, for our failure to tax ourselves and pay as we go for the real costs of the government that we elected.

America's future kids get to pay our bills, because we did not have the courage or the will to insist that we pay our own way, that we demand a balanced budget, that we tax ourselves — not our kids' kids — for the costs of our government today.

Too late? Never. Sure, you could refuse the rebate, but they'd only wastefully spend it for you. So, take it. Cash it. Save it. Don't spend a dime of it. Don't bail out Bush and the Republican Party. Make them shoulder the true costs of their recession. Make them pay the real costs of their dishonest, greedy and catastrophic economic policies.

Save it, too, because if recession descends into a global depression, you might just need it more later. At worst, you'll have it in the bank to pay your future tax increases after we elect a sensible, fair and honorable president and Congress.

Your share of the national running tab: $30,000 — before the "tax rebate."