WASHINGTON – Beyond the thick curtain of finger-wagging last week over huge deficits and an unsustainable debt, a familiar battle resurfaced over the future of Social Security.

"For those under 55, we have to start a transition to a new system that will save America from bankruptcy and a lower standard of living," Rep. Jeb Hensarling told Hardball host Chris Matthews on Monday. "Part of the social contract is going to have to be re-engineered."

To privatize or not to privatize, that is the question.

The Social Security system is sagging under its own weight. When it runs out of money, around 2037, that will trigger drastic, automatic benefit cuts of 24 percent – painful, but so is every solution that might be adopted now, from higher payroll taxes to delaying the retirement age.

So the lack of consensus is understandable, if maddening.

One idea Republicans have kicked around for years is to let younger workers shift some Social Security taxes into personal investment accounts. President George W. Bush pushed it in 2005. Let workers younger than 55 divert up to two-thirds of their payroll taxes and buy stocks and bonds.

The idea went nowhere, and the stock market crash later in Bush's term left critics smug.

Hensarling, fresh off a televised confrontation with Obama over the ballooning national debt, insists the GOP isn't pushing privatization again in its "road map" plan on fixing the budget. Hensarling helped Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, craft the plan.

"We're getting into a semantic debate," said Hensarling, who highlighted complaints that Obama would triple the debt over the next decade when he delivered the GOP radio address Saturday. "These are all terms used by liberals to try to prevent any type of entitlement reform."

How serious is this proposal, whatever the terminology?

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the road map – which also includes a voucher plan to trim Medicare spending – would indeed improve the debt outlook, with a Social Security plank similar to the one Bush advocated.

It would reduce traditional retirement benefits for workers younger than 55, with the highest-paid workers seeing the biggest reductions. Younger workers could choose to invest a portion of payroll taxes in low-risk, regulated investment options. The government would manage the accounts and insure against market loss by promising that the return on investment keeps pace with inflation.

When I asked House Minority Leader John Boehner the other day how seriously Republicans are considering privatizing Social Security, annoyance dripped in his voice. "I don't think there's ever been an effort to privatize Social Security, so I don't understand the premise of your question," he said.

Ryan chimed in. "There isn't a person in Congress that I know of that's proposing privatizing Social Security," he said.

That's not at all how Democrats see it.

"They are dusting off their old play book. ... They want to privatize Social Security," said Rep. John Larson, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Larson prodded Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, at a House hearing, for the administration's views on the plan. Obama opposes it, Geithner said: "I don't think it's fair to say to Americans that we're going to privatize Social Security."

It's tempting to see a certain tit-for-tat.

Republicans accuse Obama of trying to socialize health care. Democrats accuse them of trying to privatize the retirement safety net. Take it to the bank that these terms are poll-tested and focus-group approved for maximum inflammatory impact.

"Everybody's benefit will grow," Hensarling said of the GOP road map – though to ease the pressure on the federal budget, "it will grow less fast."

That's a time-honored Washington debate, whether it counts as a "cut" if you've reined in a growth rate.

The key point, said Hensarling, is that Social Security would actually become solvent – a goal everyone agrees on, by this or any other name.

If only the route to get there weren't so potholed.