(FORTUNE Magazine) – - An old woman presses a gun to the head of a child who holds a lollipop. ''OK,'' grandma growls, ''just drop it in the bag and no one will get hurt.'' The cartoon, taped to a wall at the modest Washington headquarters of Americans for Generational Equity, may be outrageous, but it keeps staffers focused on their mission: to rescue the kid. Loftily, AGE calls itself the ''lobby for the future,'' pledged to obey Thomas Jefferson's exhortation that each generation leave the following one at least as well off as it was. The government, AGE says, is sticking up future generations to appease today's pressure groups. Co-chairman David F. Durenberger, the Republican Senator from Minnesota who founded AGE in 1984, complains, for example, that, ''society doesn't pay for the education of most children beyond high school. Yet it shovels out free health care for elderly millionaires.'' Not surprisingly, that sort of talk enrages the American Association of Retired Persons, the National Council of Senior Citizens, and the Gray Panthers. To them AGE is a gang of granny-bashers and selfish yuppies out to quash government benefits that comfort the old. A troop count suggests that AGE does not stand a chance against the aged. AARP, the largest organization of older people, has 25 million members and a lobbying budget of over $8 million. AGE has about 600 members, and its five employees work with a budget of $280,000. Congressmen are not eager to join ranks with a group stigmatized as an enemy of the old. Representative Jim Moody, a Democrat and co-chairman of AGE, was picketed by senior citizens in his Milwaukee district simply for asking whether the government should raise taxes on Social Security benefits and start tapping the assets of the elderly. Though AGE's natural constituency is huge -- 75 million baby-boomers -- the oldest, 41, are too young to think seriously about the future benefits they may be losing to today's retirees. A mailing of 45,000 solicitations for membership last year evoked a response rate of less than 1%. The group's influence, however, seems to be growing. Its supporters include Salomon Brothers Chairman John Gutfreund, 57, Stanford University President Donald Kennedy, 55, and Richard Lamm, 51, former governor of Colorado. ''AGE has managed to get a lot of opinion pieces published,'' admits Theresa McKenna, a spokeswoman for the National Council of Senior Citizens. If ''generational equity'' isn't yet a household phrase, it soon may be.