JOHNSTOWN -- Sen. Rick Santorum launched a 10-stop tour of Pennsylvania yesterday to advocate for changes to the Social Security system, but landed -- even at his very first stop -- at the center of an already-roiling debate about the proposals.

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Sen. Rick Santorum addresses a forum about Social Security yesterday at Duquesne University. Click photo for larger image.

This week, Santorum and other Republicans members of Congress are hosting a series of town hall events around the country at which they hope to convince the public that Congress must act this year to address the Social Security program's long-term financial difficulties.

One of their chief goals is to soothe anxiety about President Bush's proposal to allow workers younger than 55 to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts that would be invested in a conservative blend of stocks and bonds.

But minutes into Santorum's first presentation at Duquesne University, jeers and skeptical questioning arose from a considerable segment of the crowd. Some of the most pointed questions came from older workers whose benefit payouts would not be altered under the president's plan.

A brighter spot for Santorum, though, was that a number of younger participants -- including college students -- said his presentation had sold them on the concept of personal retirement accounts.

The heated tenor of the debate at Santorum's public forums yesterday in Pittsburgh and later in Johnstown had echoes of the 2004 presidential campaign and illustrated how difficult it may be for Republicans to pass a Social Security overhaul this year while political ideologies still deeply divide the country.

It was clear from some questions posed by the audience, and especially by the off-microphone mumbling within the crowd, that beneath the opposition to Bush's Social Security plan, anger is still smoldering about the mounting costs of the Iraq war, the $1.9 trillion in tax cuts that Bush aims to increase by making them permanent, and the president's 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Those concerns led to several outbursts while Santorum was talking yesterday. At one point, when he showed charts illustrating the causes of the nation's rising deficits and referred to discretionary spending on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as one-time costs, audience members responded loudly with boos and catcalls.

In recent weeks, the president also has held a series of public 'conversations' about Social Security, but participants at those events were almost always handpicked by the administration to showcase Americans who support or would benefit from his proposals.

By contrast, at Santorum's first event in Pittsburgh, audience members were allowed to line up at the microphone. Many expressed deep opposition to the personal-accounts proposal, noting their own stock market losses in recent years and their opposition to the cost of creating such accounts -- $754 billion over 10 years, which could rise to as much as $2 trillion in later years, by some estimates.

When Santorum urged his listeners to consider that the Social Security system cannot pay the benefits currently promised to future retirees without some changes, and that younger workers could potentially get a higher rate of return using a personal account invested in the stock market over their lifetime, one woman in the audience retorted that the Social Security system was a social insurance program that was never intended to be an investment plan.

Santorum's arguments yesterday had more resonance among his younger listeners, who in national polling have been far more supportive of the president's proposal than older workers. Though some admitted that they had attended Santorum's presentation mainly for extra credit in their college courses, some said they were annoyed that many people opposing changes to the system would not be affected by them.

"The people here today were older that were asking these questions," said Sara Callan, 20, a University of Pittsburgh political science and public relations student. "Perhaps they're doing that for their children or their grandchildren, but the point is they're taking a partisan view," she said. "That isn't fair ... considering it's going to affect the younger people; it's not affecting them.

"They can play partisan politics all they want," said Callan, a member of Pitt's College Republicans organization. "All I want is a secure future. I'm not going to get it by playing Democrat-Republican basketball."

Santorum also converted Jennifer Claus, 19, a Democrat who voted for Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004 but said she supported the idea of personal retirement accounts after hearing Santorum speak. "I liked his idea of ownership," she said.

"I was very pleased by the presentation. ... I feel the current system is stable, but if you do look at the number of people coming into the program and the number of the people providing for it, the ratio really isn't there to support it long term."

Support for the changes Santorum endorses was not just confined to the younger generation. A number of current retirees yesterday said they were intrigued by the plan that the senator was advancing for personal accounts.

Leo Fitzpatrick, 76, a retired steel worker, who has lost two pensions plans during his lifetime after companies he worked for went bankrupt, said he liked the idea of a personal account that would be in a worker's name and couldn't be taken away. He said the plan could encourage the next generation to save.