Dear President Bush,

This letter should begin with a big thank you for the great amount of money you have saved me and a few other affluent citizens with the tax cuts you have devised. It has saved money not only for me, but for my children and grandchildren, especially if you manage to banish the inheritance tax. Somehow, though, my gratefulness for all this has been tempered by a little voice inside (my conscience?) which keeps reminding me of the many problems our nation faces - problems that might be alleviated with some of that money I am banking.

You assure us that the global warming problem is not real, but as I hear the reports of those ice caps melting and think of the water surrounding Cape Ann (where I live) and Kennebunkport (where your folks reside) rising just a few inches, it makes me nervous. So does the pollution we are generating everywhere. Shouldn't we be using our great creative resources to come up with some alternative energy sources; couldn't you encourage all Americans to conserve a bit?

Of course I realize that the fighting and nation building in Iraq is costing a lot as we are trying to make that country into a freedom loving democracy. I know it is easy to borrow the money for this, but as a tight old Yankee type, I'm not easy with this huge national debt we're growing. I was raised as a conservative who would not buy what I couldn't afford to pay for. I have to tell you I was pretty pleased with President Clinton's fiscal achievements along these lines and am alarmed with the way things are going now. I wonder if you couldn't put it to the American people that we'd be better off to pay as we go. I'll bet you could persuade most Americans (even the rich ones) that we need to contribute now, as patriots, to support our troops abroad and their families at home, rather than have our children have to pay later. You can be pretty persuasive.

And then that little voice pipes up with "What about the schools?" I know you sponsored the No Child Left Behind Program, but it doesn't seem to be working. I'm worried about this, especially when I hear more and more about the education people are getting in China and India. Could you possibly see what can be done to beef up our whole educational system? This might take a bigger bite out of that tax money, but I'm sure it will pay big dividends in the long run.

As a 78-year-old woman I have little reason to be concerned about my reproductive rights, but I do have reason to be concerned about my granddaughters' reproductive rights and my own civil rights. I remember my mother describing the parade for women's rights to vote in New York. (As soon as that right was won, she voted in every election until she died at age 111, Republican every time.) I feel very grateful to the brave women who made this possible and also, years later, the right to choose. I am fiercely defensive about any attempt to take either of these rights away. I believe we Americans have the right to make our own religious choices, the right to speak in private, to express our own views and be free of the government interference in our private affairs, as long as we are not causing harm to others. I don't need some Washington bureaucrat to make my moral decisions for me (seems quite a few of them need to examine their own morals right now!). In fact, isn't that freedom what you keep saying we are fighting for in Iraq? I am confused about your definition of "freedom" though.

From my earliest years my parents embedded in me a strong work ethic and I believed that Republicans stood for taking care of oneself, being free of government interference, paying your own way. But as life threw me into contact with people of other colors and cultures, people with terrible handicaps, people who inherited great wealth and didn't need to work, and others of the huge variety that America is, I realized it is not in the best interest of our nation to ignore such differences. We somehow need to balance our independent rights with a system in which the well off pitch in to help the not so well off. Even the richest will benefit from the poorest child being educated. The future of our nation depends on all of our citizens having a fair shot.

President Bush, I wish you could hear that same little voice I hear and take on these issues. You don't have to do any more for those of us who have plenty. We'll make it fine without the tax cuts. None of us in this country will make it, though, if we keep on this path of making the rich richer and the poor poorer, ignoring the trashing of our planet, dividing us on health care, education and other social issues.

So, I have to tell you that instead of saying "thank you for the tax breaks", I'm listening to that little voice (my conscience? Jesus?) and looking for some folks who care about these issues too. So far, they're all Democrats.

Sincerely yours,