HILADELPHIA - Al Gore and George W. Bush converged on the presidential battleground of Pennsylvania yesterday, with the vice president announcing a plan to increase Social Security for millions of women while Bush focused anew on education.
Gore also took aim at the Texas governor's proposal to allow private retirement accounts in the Social Security system, telling senior citizens, ''If he gets his hands on America's retirement system, it will quickly become a system of social insecurity.''
Across town, Bush met with Latino leaders and held an education round-table discussion. After rolling out new literacy and teacher aid programs last week, he reviewed his plans to pass federal education money to states with few strings if they develop accountability systems.
Bush responded to both Gore's Social Security criticism and proposal by telling reporters: ''I can't think of a better reform than allowing women to manage their own personal savings accounts.''
Seven months before the election, with the Democratic and Republican nominations essentially assured, Gore and Bush are beginning to focus on five or six swing states that could determine the final outcome.
While most are in the Midwest, one is Pennsylvania, which has 23 electoral votes. Yesterday was primary day in the state.
Gore proposed Social Security revisions that would benefit widows and an estimated 8 million working parents - most of them women.
In particular, he said parents should receive credit for up to five years of work if they take that time to raise their children.
Currently, Social Security payments are based on average earnings over 35 years of work. Because many women leave the work force for several years to raise children, the typical woman works 27 years - penalizing her when it comes to Social Security payments.
Giving the woman credit for some of that lost time would increase Social Security benefits by about $600 per year, Gore's campaign estimated.
Gore also said widows should receive larger Social Security payments when their husbands die.
Under current law, a widow's payment can be as much as halved when her spouse dies. The vice president wants to increase the payment to three-quarters of the former amount.
Aides did not offer a cost for the proposals but said both were accounted for in Gore's overall Social Security plan.
While talking about Social Security, Gore repeatedly labeled Bush's proposed five-year, $483 billion tax cut a ''risky tax scheme.'' He said it would not leave any money to reform Social Security.
Bush has committed to ensuring that all payroll taxes be spent only on Social Security, not borrowed for other government purposes.
Bush said he welcomed the debate.
''It's the status quo, an administration that has not tried to reform Social Security, versus an administration that will put capital on the line to say to both Republican and Democrats, `Let's come together to make sure there's a Social Security system available to both women and men in the long run,''' the governor said.
