WASHINGTON-- At a recent forum on increasing savings, Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was asked how difficult it would be to persuade his fellow Republicans to set aside several billion dollars a year to help low-income children save for college and retirement.

In response, the senator put forward what is likely to be a key message in his 2006 re-election campaign:

"I've always said the president has a compassionate conservative agenda, and [former Oklahoma Rep.] J.C. Watts [Jr.] and I are the two Republicans who are going to try to enact it," Santorum said half-jokingly. "Now it's just me."

As he primes for what may be the most difficult race of his political career -- he's likely to face state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., a socially conservative Democrat next year -- Santorum is highlighting his proposals to help low-income Americans build wealth.

In previous sessions of Congress, Santorum was well known for championing legislation that promoted charitable giving through tax incentives. And he and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., successfully shepherded a charitable giving proposal through both houses of Congress only to watch it sputter to a halt just shy of approval.

But this year -- with the backdrop of President Bush's call for changes to the Social Security system and for initiatives that encourage an "ownership society" -- Santorum is placing a new emphasis on asset-building plans for poor people.

He is already a leading proponent of Bush's proposal to allow younger workers to set up personal investment accounts carved out of the Social Security system.

But he has also joined with House and Senate lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to work on less controversial initiatives. Earlier this year, he helped form the bipartisan Savings and Ownership Caucus -- a group that will try to craft measures to increase America's savings rate.

Some Democratic activists say Santorum's efforts and his eyebrow-raising alliances with senators as liberal as Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., are a pre-election attempt to gloss over his disdain for other government programs that help the poor.

Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, noted, for example, that Santorum voted in favor of a budget this year that slashed $10 billion from the Medicaid health care program over five years. (Santorum said the cuts would target fraud and waste in the program.) Casey's campaign manager, Jay Reiff, said Santorum has not done enough in the Senate to address the problems of millions of Americans struggling to get by -- one area that he expects will be a major campaign issue.

"The truth is Rick Santorum repeatedly spearheaded opposition to efforts aimed at helping families working to get ahead," Reiff said. "His list of transgressions is long -- eliminating overtime pay, opposing the Family and Medical Leave Act, opposing increases to the minimum wage, and attempting to privatize Social Security -- to name a few."

But Santorum argues that the savings initiatives he has introduced with Democrats this session may be more successful than some traditional big government anti-poverty programs. Asset-building initiatives, he said, can break down barriers between liberals and conservatives by weaving together conservative goals of promoting capitalism, savings and investment, and small business development, with liberals goals of using the government to help give poor people a hand.

The Pennsylvania senator was working on several asset-building initiatives as far back as late 1999 with Lieberman and then-Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., who was among the first to begin pushing for retirement savings accounts to be created for every child at birth.

In April, Santorum reintroduced a measure known as the Savings for Working Families Act with Lieberman. The proposal would create an additional 900,000 individual development accounts for poor Americans -- a concept supported by Bush.

Under the proposal, the federal government would provide tax incentives to participating banks and community organizations to offer accounts to low-income Americans, who would receive a dollar-for-dollar match on some of the money they set aside in the account for education, buying a home, or starting a small business.

Contributions to the account would be limited to $1,500 a year and the match from the participating bank or community organization, paid for with tax incentives, would be up to $500 annually.

Aides estimate that the cost of the proposal would be about $1.7 billion over 10 years.

Santorum is also the prime Republican sponsor of a new measure known as the ASPIRE act -- America Saving for Personal Investment, Retirement and Education -- that he has introduced with Sen. Jon S. Corzine, D-N.J. The bill is co-sponsored by Schumer and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

Under that proposal, every child in America would get their own savings account at birth with a loan of $500 from the federal government as seed money. Low-income children would get an additional $500 for a total of $1,000.

Once the account is open, family members, friends and mentors could contribute up to $1,000 a year to the child's account. If the income of the child's family fell below the federal poverty line, the government would match contributions to the child's account up to $500 each year.

When the child turned 18, the savings in the account could be used for education, or rolled over into an account and used later for a home or for retirement savings. At 30, the account's owner would have to pay back the government's initial $500 contribution.

The money in the account would be invested in an index fund. A board would be appointed to administer the investment options in a structure similar to the Thrift Savings Plan for federal employees. Though the Joint Committee on Taxation has not officially analyzed the cost of the ASPIRE program, Republican aides say analyses by outside groups show that it would cost about $3.8 billion a year or $38 billion over 10 years.

Santorum co-sponsored a variation of the proposal introduced by Kerrey in 2000. That program created an account for every child born in America by borrowing $2,000 for each child born from the Social Security system, an initial amount that had to be paid back, but the child could not withdraw the money earned in the account until retirement.

Santorum has acknowledged that it may be difficult to convince his colleagues to pay for the ASPIRE act, particularly with soaring federal deficits.

"It's a slow process." But, he said, "It's worth the money."