Days after the election, a group of blue staters put up a Web site called SorryEverybody.com, on which fellow 48-percenters can post apologies to the world for the re-election of George W. Bush ("the world" recently responded with ApologiesAccepted.com.)

Well, someone should publish a Web site where Americans can apologize to the 21 million-plus 18-to-29-year-olds who voted on Nov. 2, because, with all due respect to the rest of humanity, it is young Americans who will pay most dearly in the long run for Bush's four more years.

According to the much-maligned exit polls, young voters were the only age group to favor John Kerry, 55 percent to 45 percent (Kerry also won majorities among single women, Hispanics, African-Americans and lower-income folk). Gen-next beat MTV's call for "20 million loud" by more than a million at the polls, and still got called slackers for failing to raise their vote share over 2000.

And while most young voters concentrated on jobs, the economy and Iraq, their uncles, aunts, parents and grandparents showed their "values" by helping themselves to trillions of dollars in tax cuts the young'uns will have to pay for, and endorsing a costly guerrilla war the whippersnappers mostly get to fight.

Oh, and the elders also voted to protect marriage, which should greatly ease the pain over Mom and Dad's divorce …

The massive budget and trade deficits that have flourished on Bush's watch (nearly $500 billion-a-year and counting, plus Congress' recent $800 billion boost to the debt ceiling), haven't yet hurt short-term interest rates or burst the stock bubble that keep the grandparents in the financial pink. (It's no coincidence that the vast majority of the wealthy are also the elderly). Instead, as the deficits grow, it is long-term interest rates that will rise, ultimately affecting younger Americans' ability to buy a home, control their debt and build a decent net worth.

It's as if the grown folks went on a shopping spree with credit cards they conveniently put in the kids' names.

If the Republican Congress follows through on Bush's pledge to privatize part of Social Security "for younger workers," current retirees and Boomers will almost certainly get their checks, while younger Americans can look forward to getting the bill for the $1 trillion transition costs, even before their government-funded broker sinks their nest egg into the next Enron.

Even on Medicare "reform," which America's elderly ratified by giving nearly 60 percent of their votes to Bush, it is young people who will be left holding the bag. Skyrocketing health care and drug costs promise to push the $540 billion boondoggle over the brink -- and that's before Congress is forced to close the funding "doughnut" which chokes off grandpa's drug supply between $2,501 and $5,000. This bill, too, was bought with young America's credit -- making the current GOP a poster child for robbing Peter to pay Pete Sr.

There's more:

The lackluster job market economists are projecting over the next four years is what today's college students get to graduate into -- assuming they can afford rising tuition costs while the GOP slashes Pell grants.

The forswearing of science and research will further limit job opportunities, even as American schools fall farther behind other Western nations and their younger brothers and sisters are force-fed an educational diet of multiple choice tests, faith-based abstinence education and "creation science."

Let's not even talk about the environment, which under Bush deregulation will be fouler for young America's kids than it is for them.

And then there's the war, which if it spirals even further out of control, as we alternately "liberate" and crush the Iraqi people, could yet turn the draft into a grim reality. (With the election over, the generals recently began admitting we don't have enough troops in Iraq. Now they tell us.) Even without a draft, the Pentagon's continual extension of our soldiers' tours of duty amounts to the same thing.

So the next time you see a young person listening to their iPod or downloading Mosh on their cell phone, don't roll your eyes and curse MTV's contribution to the degeneration of American culture (old folks own MTV, too). Instead, tap them on the shoulder, look them in the eye, and do something you hardly see in Bush's America: Say "I'm sorry."

Joy-Ann Reid is a freelance writer living in Broward County. E-mail: joyannreid@hotmail.com.

© 2004 South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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