WASHINGTON – After a week sampling public sentiment, Republican congressional leaders stressed support yesterday for President Bush’s plans to remake Social Security but conceded final action may not be possible this year.

“This is the mother of all issues,” said House Majority Leader Thomas DeLay, adding that opponents of the president’s plans “are better organized than we are.”

Mr. DeLay, a Texas Republican, along with Senator Frist of Tennessee – the Senate majority leader – and numerous other GOP lawmakers said Mr. Bush’s public campaigning has begun to show results. “People have bought into the fact that we have a problem” with Social Security’s future financing, said Senator Isakson, a Georgia Republican.

At the same time, they said Mr. Bush has much more work ahead of him.

“The president will have to stay out there and lead on it, when a lot of political figures want to run and hide and when you have a lot of people who say there’s no problem,” Dr. Frist said in a shot at Democrats.

Republican leaders began surveying their rank-and-file after a weeklong absence from the Capitol as the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, offered his own blunt assessment of Mr. Bush’s signature issue. “I don’t think the Republicans are very happy about the position the president is putting them in,” he said.

“In two months, the president has created a firestorm against” his own plan, taunted Senator Schumer, a New York Democrat.

Mr. Bush is to travel to six states over the next two weeks as he labors to build public support for an overhaul of the Depression-era government program.

Echoing White House claims, Republicans said they hoped that by the time he is finished, the president will have produced a public groundswell for legislation, forcing at least some Democrats to reconsider their opposition.

First Dr. Frist, then Mr. DeLay, refused to be pinned down on a timetable for legislation, with Mr. DeLay later saying they were “shooting to get it done this year.”

“My goal is to have it on the floor” this year, Dr. Frist said. At the same time, noting Democratic opposition to Mr. Bush’s current plans, he said, “I want to be realistic and make sure we can have a bill that can be debated and move through this body.”