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The battle to overhaul Social Security has just begun, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a Pittsburgh-area speech Thursday.

"The president is bound and determined to stay on this course, and keep pushing very very hard until we get something done," Cheney said during a town hall-style meeting at La Roche College in McCandless. "We want to have a major national debate."

His visit was part of a stepped-up effort to promote President Bush's plan to allow workers younger than 55 to divert 4 percent of their pay -- taxes now earmarked for Social Security -- into personal retirement accounts.

Cheney spoke earlier yesterday at a similar event in Michigan and earlier this week in Nevada and California. Bush has visited 18 states in a 60-day campaign to drum up support for the plan.

Whether the 70-year-old Social Security program faces a crisis is debatable, but there's broad agreement the system at least needs repairs.

As more baby boomers retire, the system will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes. That was projected to happen by 2018. On Wednesday, Social Security trustees revised their forecast, saying the program will begin paying out more than it receives by 2017.

"The battle is just now being joined," Cheney, 64, said during the hourlong program in a gym at the college, where he was joined by U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Bradford Woods.

"I believe we are making progress in the sense of getting people to focus on it," the vice president told more than 300 people at the invitation-only event. "The vast majority of Americans now understand there is a problem."

If nothing is done, the only way to keep the program solvent will be through substantial tax increases and reductions in benefits, Cheney said.

"Each year, we'll get into more and more of a crunch and have to come up with a more radical solution," he said. "We need to address the issue now. What's at stake here is what we pass on to our kids and grandkids."

Anticipating the vice president's visit, Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle of Swissvale held a conference call with reporters Wednesday to oppose the president's plan.

"I think most Pittsburghers understand that if they have a flat tire on their car, they fix the flat tire. They don't go out and borrow money to buy a new car," Doyle said. "But that's what President Bush and Vice President Cheney are proposing to the American public with this plan of theirs.

"Incremental changes will make the fund solvent. We don't have to go to a privatization plan which will do nothing to address solvency, but will put many Americans at risk," he said.

Doyle also criticized the format for Cheney's visit, calling it a "politically staged event" with select participants instead of an open public debate.

Hart's office distributed most of the tickets.

"We tried to invite a diverse audience that we knew would be interested in the issue," said her press secretary, Lee Cohen.

Not all of the attendees who were picked to ask Cheney questions support the plan.

Kim Miller, 28, of Mt. Lebanon, challenged Cheney after he compared the proposed individual savings accounts to the Thrift Savings Plan available to federal workers.

Cheney had said the Thrift Savings Plan had a return on investment of 4 percent to 11 percent over the past 10 years -- compared to 1.3 percent for Social Security. Miller, a Democrat, told the vice president her experience with the Thrift Plan, when she was a federal employee for several years, was unpleasant.

"I didn't do well at all," she said.

Bob Lawton, 81, a Republican from McCandless, told Cheney: "It seems to me you're kind of putting the cart before the horse. We've spent all day talking about personal accounts, but what are you going to do about this basic problem with Social Security? If we're losing money now and you're going to take 4 percent out of it, we're going to lose it a lot faster."

Cheney said personal savings accounts are only part of the solution, but other actions will be necessary to keep Social Security solvent.

Mike Rubino, 19, a Seton Hill University student active in the Republican Party, said Cheney reinforced Rubino's support of private savings accounts.

"I've realized there's not going to be too much there for me when I retire," said Rubino, of Monaca, Beaver County.

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