Just as tax rebates begin arriving in people's bank accounts and mailboxes, the talk in Washington is turning to the idea of a gas-tax vacation to help Americans bear the burden of the skyrocketing price of gasoline.

Most of the talk is coming from the camps of a pair of presidential candidates, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain and scrambling Democrat insurgent Hillary Clinton.

Democrat Barack Obama has distanced himself from the idea of a gas-tax vacation, and tartly labeled it the McCain-Clinton plan.

Even President Bush, one of the moving forces behind the tax rebate intended as an economic stimulus, has at least indirectly dismissed the gas-tax break as a short-term answer that won't solve a long-term problem.

What is perhaps most disconcerting about the gas-tax "vacation" is that many economists and energy analysts say such a move could actually exacerbate our problems with fuel prices rather than provide noticeable relief from the rising cost of gasoline and diesel fuel.

Such is the price of pandering.

Even sadder is the mounting price of deferring our fiscal responsibilities for any number of government policies — from the cost of economic stimulus checks to the cost of waging war.

Quite simply, we are building up a debt load that must someday be addressed and the sad fact is that much of the burden will fall upon generations who have nothing to do with accumulating those debts.

It's interesting that as the home finance crisis has come into focus in the past year, fiscally conservative critics have been quick to lay the responsibility primarily — if not solely — at the feet of the borrowers.

Where have those same critics been as the Bush administration has essentially taken out a zero-down mortgage on the cost of war?

Even as the high cost of waging two wars continues to be deferred to the future, we are encouraged to spend, spend, spend our economic stimulus checks and now we have two presidential candidates encouraging us to burn more, not less gas this summer.

There will come a day when the young people of our nation — the toddlers and children of today — are going to be asked to start paying off the balloon note their parents and grandparents have been inflating for eight years.

When that happens, some serious questions are going to be asked. Let's just hope that leaders with names such as Bush, McClain and/or Clinton are still around to try to answer them.