WASHINGTON – While Senators Clinton and Schumer oppose President Bush’s proposal to create individual retirement accounts using Social Security taxes, they are declining to put forward counterproposals. The senators and other congressional Democrats say the president must first drop his insistence on the accounts and explain how he will fix the expected fiscal shortfall in the Social Security system.

The Democratic strategy of silence carries political risk, some strategists have warned, if voters conclude the party is merely obstructing the president and not offering solutions of its own.

Both senators say they support expanding tax-free savings plans that are outside of the Social Security system, such as 401(k) accounts, as a way of encouraging national saving. However, they oppose what they call the “privatization” of Social Security itself, and the government borrowing that would be necessary to create the accounts.

Senator Schumer yesterday called on Mr. Bush to abandon the idea of personal accounts and convene a committee of Democrats and Republicans to negotiate a bipartisan solution to the projected financial shortfall, which the senator called “a problem, not a crisis.”

“We don’t think we have to act in two or three months or the sky falls down,” Mr. Schumer said. The administration estimates the system will begin to pay out more in benefits than it takes in through contributions by 2018. By 2042, the system could be insolvent.

“The president should take privatization off the table, set up a bipartisan group the way Ronald Reagan did, of leading Democrats and leading Republicans both in and out of Congress,” he said.

Mr. Schumer said his ideal bipartisan solution would “preserve Social Security, keep it as close as possible to what it is today, and preserve it for generations to come.”

When Social Security faced an urgent shortfall in 1983, President Reagan convened a commission headed by Alan Greenspan, now the chairman of the Federal Reserve, to find solutions. The bipartisan group came up with a hybrid plan that involved increased payroll taxes, benefit cuts, a phased-in increase in the retirement age, and a tax on some benefits.

Mr. Reagan said the plan required “sacrifice by all.”

Mr. Schumer said he would not rule out a bipartisan solution that included benefit cuts. “Everything would be on the table, but I’m not going to endorse any specifics,” he said.

“If people start saying ‘I rule out this, I’m for this,’ you’re not going to get anything,” he said.

Mrs. Clinton, however, has criticized plans that suggest reducing the rate of growth in benefits. “I believe working Americans should get the benefits they’ve paid for, and that we can strengthen Social Security without undermining its fundamental purpose,” she said.

A plan for solvency “should start by paying back the Trust Funds,” she has said.

The White House has acknowledged that the private accounts are not aimed at solving the shortfall that will be created when baby boomers begin retiring in large numbers. The voluntary accounts are a way for younger workers to get a better return on their contribution, administration officials argue.

Democrats respond that the accounts would replace a guaranteed benefit with one subject to stock market risk.

Meanwhile, the shortfall in the Social Security program would have to be fixed by some combination of tax increases and/or benefit cuts. Mr. Bush said he will leave it to Congress to decide which.

Mr. Schumer said the president has the obligation to take the lead in fashioning a fiscal solution.

“Without the president sitting at the table, you’re not going to get anything done,” Mr. Schumer said. “If he believes there is a crisis, he ought to put the entire proposal on the table. We’re getting bits and pieces.”

Mrs. Clinton has said she supports “measures to strengthen pension programs and other tax-free retirement savings options,” but not accounts funded by Social Security taxes. She has also criticized proposals to borrow money in order to create individual accounts.

“I do not think it’s right to saddle future generations of workers with almost $5 trillion of debt that we’ve borrowed from China, Japan, and other foreign nations,” she said at a town hall meeting in Manhattan last week.

Some Democratic strategists have questioned the approach of criticizing private accounts but insisting that the onus is on Mr. Bush to come up with a plan to keep Social Security solvent.

In a recent memo to Democrats, strategists James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Robert Shrum wrote that public opinion polls suggest Americans perceive Republicans as more “serious” about tackling the problems facing Social Security, while Democrats risk being viewed as obstructionist.

“Voters are looking for reform, change, and new ideas, but Democrats seem stuck in concrete,” they wrote.

Democrats should advance a range of policy options in order to “change the terms of debate,” they argued. Options could include making Mr. Bush’s upper-income tax cuts temporary, creating new savings and investment accounts, and a program to limit drug prices.

Their concern is shared by others.

Edward Lorenzen, the executive director of Centrists.org, a nonpartisan group that advocates centrist policies, said Democrats may be correct in saying the onus is on the president to spell out his own plans first.

“But having said that, I think there is a real danger that if Democrats are perceived as simply defending the status quo, that will be damaging to them politically,” said Mr. Lorenzen, a former aide to several conservative Democrats in the House.

Mr. Schumer’s call for bipartisan negotiations would have the best chance of succeeding if neither party set out conditions, Mr. Lorenzen speculated.

“The president has to say he will not insist on private accounts, but Democrats have to be willing to accept individual accounts as part of bipartisan negotiations,” he said.