US President George W. Bush will use his State of the Union address on Wednesday night to argue for his plan for overhauling Social Security, and stress the need to stay the course in Iraq.

Bush will deliver a 40-minute speech to a joint session of Congress at 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT Thursday), the first annual speech for his second term. Millions of Americans are expected to watch the televised speech.

The White House said Bush's address will be divided evenly between domestic policy and foreign affairs. Social Security and Iraq were expected to top the State of Union agenda.

Administration officials said Bush would flesh out new details about his plan to allow workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into private accounts with an aim of fixing the long-term fiscal problems.

Under the system's current projections, Social Security will start taking in less in payroll tax revenue than it pays out in benefits in 2018, and by 2042 will be able to pay only around three-quarters of benefits promised by the system.

During his campaign for re-election, Bush had said the Social Security was facing a crisis if left unchanged. He has promoted his privatization plan on his campaign trails.

Many Democrats oppose Bush's reform proposal, saying individual accounts would add to the deficit and force at least temporary cuts in Social Security benefits. They say the plan us the wrong solution for a system that is not in crisis.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, calling the Bush plan "Social Security roulette," said Democrats had more than enough votes to block Bush's proposal. "President Bush should forget about privatizing Social Security. It will not happen," Reid said Tuesday.

As a compromising gesture, officials said Bush would promise in his address that workers currently 55 and older would stay in the current system, with their benefits unchanged.

"I think you will hear him talk in greater detail than he has previously about how we need to work together to solve this problem and permanently fix Social Security so that we don't have to come back any decade or two decades to try to fix this problem, " White House spokesman Scott MeClellan said.

Speaking three days after Iraq held an election, Bush would also emphasize the need to complete the job of training Iraqi security forces to take on primary responsibility for protect Iraq, officials said.

Reid and other Democrats have called on Bush to spell out "a real and understandable plan" in his speech for the US military forces to pull out of Iraq following the election. "We need an exit strategy so that we know what victory is and how we can get there," Reid said.

But the White House said Bush would not set out a plan to bring home American troops, insisting that a timetable of withdrawal would send a wrong message to terrorists "because all the terrorists have to do is wait, and then they can plan and coordinate and prepare attacks around those timetables."

Administration officials also said Bush's speech would be "a blueprint" to complement the central theme of his Jan. 20 inaugural address - spreading democracy around the world.

The president will talk about how to build on the successes of the elections in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and Iraq and reaffirm his commitment to expanding democracy, officials said.

Among other important agenda, Bush was also expected to touch on the need for strict budget discipline as part of his plan to cut the deficit in half by 2009 from a 2004 deficit of 521 billion dollars. He will announce the 2006 federal budget on Monday.

Source: Xinhua