President Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security is dead, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a visit to Pittsburgh yesterday.

Reid along with Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate's Democratic Policy Committee, and Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, came to Coraopolis for a town meeting about Social Security.

Afterward, Reid told the Post-Gazette editorial board that he had enough votes in the Senate to block President Bush's proposal to introduce private savings accounts as an alternative to the existing federal retirement plan. "It's dead," Reid said. "The president just hasn't acknowledged it yet."

The minority leader also told the editorial board that the Pennsylvania Senate seat held by Republican Rick Santorum is the Democratic Party's principal target in the 2006 elections. Reid also expressed concern that if Senate rules are changed to put an end to filibusters to delay action on judicial nominees, a vital protection for minority-party rights would be lost.

But Reid backed away from earlier threats to shut down the Senate if majority Republicans push through the rules change, which some senators have taken to calling the "nuclear option."

"We're not going to bring the Senate to a standstill," Reid said. "The troops will get their money." But he said Democrats would make life difficult for Senate Republicans by requiring votes on procedural questions, which normally are resolved by unanimous consent.

Bush has proposed letting workers under age 55 redirect up to a third of what they and their employers now pay in Social Security taxes instead toward personal savings accounts, which could be invested in stocks and bonds and potentially earn a higher rate of interest than the historic average of 1.8 percent that the Social Security trust fund has reaped from its investments in Treasury bonds.

Because the federal government would need to borrow money to pay transition costs, Bush's plan would make Social Security's financial problems worse, the Democratic senators said at their town meeting in Coraopolis Towers, which was attended by about 90 people, most of them senior citizens. Baucus said the estimated $5 trillion that would have to be borrowed over the first 20 years would more than double the national debt.

Supporters of the private-accounts proposal say the transition costs merely bring forward debts the Social Security system already is obligated to pay.

Bush has acknowledged that private accounts will not resolve Social Security's financial problems. He proposed them as a means of ameliorating a likely reduction in benefits for younger workers.

The Democrats offered no plan of their own to solve Social Security's financial woes. Reid said they would not do so until the president "takes personal accounts off the table."

At an earlier forum sponsored by the AFL-CIO in the Pittsburgh City Council chamber, Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Swissvale, reiterated his plan for making Social Security solvent. Doyle wants to lift the cap on the wages to which Social Security taxes are applied, which is currently set at $90,000, and permit Social Security trust fund managers to invest a portion of tax revenues in the stock market.

Radical conservatives are behind the drive to put an end to filibusters against judges, Reid and Dorgan contended.

Under current Senate rules, a filibuster delaying a vote on a bill or a nomination can be halted only if 60 senators vote to cut off debate. To change such a rule, 67 senators' votes are required. But that rule can be circumvented by appealing the ruling of the chair, for which only a simple majority is required.

Republicans will act to change the rule "whenever they've got the votes," Reid said. "They haven't got them yet."

Only one Republican -- Arizona Sen. John McCain -- has said he would vote against the rule change. But six other GOP senators are undecided. Republicans hold 55 of 100 Senate seats.

Ending judicial filibusters would make the Senate just like the House, where the majority rules with an iron fist, the Democrats said. "The 60-vote requirement is what forces compromise," Dorgan said.

Asked at the editorial board meeting about Democratic prospects in 2006, Reid said: "Our priority so far in this election cycle is Bob Casey Jr."

Casey, the state treasurer, had a 17-point lead over Santorum in a recent poll, Reid said.