(CNSNews.com) - As President Bush opened a two-day economic summit at the White House Wednesday, liberals countered with criticism of his plans for Social Security reform that include partial privatization of accounts.

Social Security reform played a part in the presidential election, with Bush proposing that taxpayers be allowed to funnel a small percentage of their Social Security withholdings into privately held accounts owned by workers.

The president's proposal, tentative as it is, comes amid predictions that the retirement system will be bankrupt by the time young people now paying into the system retire. But liberal groups like The Century Foundation claim Bush's plan will make "retirees, young people and the economy generally ... worse off under a system of private accounts."

According to a report from the foundation, "Creating private accounts would make Social Security's financing problems worse, not better." The report states that private accounts "could dampen economic growth, which would further weaken Social Security's finances."

Social Security is funded by a payroll tax separate from income taxes. The funds are supposed to be used only for the Social Security system. In the current "pay-as-you-go" system, today's workers are funding the benefits of today's retirees.

Under a partially privatized system, today's workers would be saving a small amount of their Social Security taxes - two percent has been proposed as a starting point - for their private Personal Retirement Accounts (PRA) that would resemble Individual Retirement Accounts and could also be passed on to heirs.

The vast majority of Social Security taxes would still go into the existing system to ensure that citizens on the brink of retirement would not lose their benefits. Current debate focuses heavily on how much of a worker's money would be eligible for a PRA.

But Century Foundation Vice President Greg Anrig argues that reforming the system is unnecessary and that privatization is a bad option.

"The nature of the problem is one that is worth paying attention to," Anrig told CNSNews.com , "but it's nowhere near a crisis." He added that estimates show the system would remain solvent until 2042.

"That isn't to say that we shouldn't try to do something about it now or in the relative near future," Anrig said, "but it does suggest that there's no need for drastic kind of action certainly of the sort the president is proposing."

According to Anrig, the president's plan runs the risk of the government having to borrow anywhere from $2 trillion to $3 trillion to fund Social Security shortfalls created by PRAs. "The additional borrowing... would increase the size of the federal budget deficit as well as the size of the federal debt," he said.

Estimates on how long Social Security can remain solvent vary, and Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute said privatization would provide more security for the ailing system, which he said "absolutely" faces an imminent crisis.

"We're not talking about spending more money," said Tanner, director of Cato's Project on Social Security Choice. "We're actually talking about spending less, but we're having to spend it up front today rather than spending some time in the future." As is, he said, "Social Security is facing about $12 trillion in debt."

The system, Tanner said, "depends very heavily on having a lot of workers and only a few retirees, and in 1950 that's what you had. You had 16 workers who were paying the taxes for every retiree who was receiving benefits."

But according to Tanner, when the Baby Boomers retire, there will be just 2 workers paying the taxes for each retiree.

"It's like stopping a chain letter while protecting everyone at the top of the chain from getting hurt. It does mean there are some short-term costs. In the long run, it saves money," Tanner said.

And, Tanner added, "All the plans that are actually [being considered] have safety nets built in and other ways of limiting investments to broadly diversified safe investments."

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