The New York Times' Anne E. Kornblut reports, you decide.

James B. Lockhart III, the deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration, said Thursday that he had appeared with four Republican members in recent days to provide information, not to endorse the diversion of some payroll taxes to personal accounts.

But several Democrats are objecting to Mr. Lockhart's role in an aggressive campaign to promote administration proposals for restructuring Social Security.

"The administration is running one of the most sophisticated grassroots lobbying strategies in history, and they are using federal employees and taxpayer dollars to do it," said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. "Social Security employees should be spending their time serving the needs of Social Security recipients, not advancing a political agenda."

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the agency "is supposed to serve all the people and should not be giving the appearance that it is taking sides."

"It is absolutely inappropriate for officials from the Social Security Administration to hit the hustings in support of the president's plan," Mr. Schumer said in a statement.

It's a tough issue. On one hand, you have officials of an agency calling for their agency's privatization and on the other hand you have ethics. In Bush's Washington, which one will win out?