COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolinians have had an appetite for sending Social Security system reformers to Washington for a decade.

That makes it a safe bet that Gov. Mark Sanford and U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint will be beaming as President Bush comes to the Statehouse Monday to sing a song they've belted out for years.

Half way through his 60-stop tour to underscore Social Security's problems, Bush may find his most receptive audience to date on an issue he's made central to his second term.

Sanford served three terms in the U.S. House. Apart from his sleeping on a futon in his office, Sanford was known as the well-tanned guy flashing a toothy smile and a bank deposit book, proclaiming that Americans deserved the ability to grow wealth by socking away part of their Social Security into private accounts.

In his last House term, Sanford pushed three Social Security bills, including one that returned the system's surpluses to workers through vouchers they could invest.

"We were definitely country when country wasn't cool," Sanford said.

Sanford honored a term limit pledge in 2000 and was running for governor the next year. After winning the primary, Sanford faced ads saying "Wrong on Social Security. Wrong for South Carolina."

But Sanford handily defeated Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges with 53 percent of the vote.

Why are South Carolinians so tolerant of politicians who want to change Social Security?

"We're a close-knit state," Sanford says. Families stick together and generations come to the Sunday table to eat and talk about problems, he said. Social Security's shortcomings easily come into focus around those dinner tables, he said.

Graham says voters here "understand that Washington, D.C. has a lot of problems and we've ignored Social Security too long. ... And then when young South Carolinians step forth with bold ideas, you get rewarded and not flamed in South Carolina."

Neal Thigpen, a Francis Marion University political science professor, has a simple explanation.

"The Republicans are so strong here they can talk about annexing Chile to the United States or something and probably not be at that much of a risk," he said.

Thirty years ago, it was different. In 1974, then-U.S. Rep. Ed Young, a Republican, voted against a Social Security benefit increase and lost his 6th District seat later that year to Democrat John Jenrette, who used the vote as a wedge to win votes, Thigpen said.

Social Security was a losing issue for Bush, too, when he lost his bid for the U.S. House in 1978, Thigpen notes.

But Democrats lately have had a tough time exploiting the issue.

In 2002, Graham, who also served in the U.S. House for three terms, faced former Judge Alex Sanders in the contest to replace retiring Republican U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond. Sanders blasted Graham's efforts on personal savings accounts as trying to save Social Security "by gambling a third of the money" and called it "the worst idea for modification of Social Security." Graham faced ads saying he wanted Social Security money to be invested in companies like Enron.

Graham won the contest by a 55-44 margin and now is seen as the Social Security overhaul consensus builder on Capitol Hill.

DeMint also pushed private accounts in his three U.S. House terms.

When he honored a term limit pledge and ran for U.S. Senate last year to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, DeMint, too, faced criticism from his Democratic opponent. Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum said DeMint was pushing a "risky scheme" and promised to "protect Social Security, not privatize it."

DeMint won 54 percent of the vote.

Since Bush's re-election, he has made Social Security one of his top domestic priorities. Graham and DeMint have taken leading roles in the debate. They both want private accounts, but they disagree on how to pay for it.

DeMint hasn't said how he'll pay for the transition costs.

Graham wants to change an index used to calculate benefits for higher-income retirees that would tie their checks to inflation instead of wage growth. He also wants to raise a cap on earnings subject to Social Security taxes.

The "smart thing for us to be looking at is to slow down the growth in benefits for middle and upper income workers in the future," Graham said.

"I've always believed that if you're going to have personal accounts - which I think we need for younger workers - borrowing a bunch of money to set them up is not going to sell," Graham said. He wants to raise the earnings cap on wages subject to Social Security taxes so the national deficit doesn't become more of a problem.

Raising the tax cap isn't a radical idea, Graham said. A law that former President Ronald Reagan put in place raises the cap yearly. It will be $90,000 next year and in 2008 will rise to about $102,000 and by 2014 it will be $123,000, Graham said.

"Every year the amount of money subject to Social Security goes up. I'm just accelerating it," he said.

The cap idea has made Graham the target of a spate of television ads from Club for Growth, a conservative Washington-based economic group that donated to DeMint's campaign.

Graham expects Bush to turn soon to talking more about "the specifics of what's on the table. The only thing he's ruled out is raising the (Social Security payroll tax) rate."

But DeMint isn't ready to buy much of what Graham now is selling.

"I'm not saying there's no way," DeMint said. But "the last thing we should consider as Republicans is raising taxes."

As for indexing, the problem isn't that the benefits are too high, DeMint said, "it's that we are not saving anything that goes into" Social Security and that's turned it into an unfunded pension plan.

Raising the retirement age is off the table, too, DeMint said.

"The people who need Social Security the most are the ones that are already in our offices in their 50s asking for disability because they've been on their feet all their lives," DeMint said. If people want to work past 67, it should be up to them, he said.

Given the differences, it may be months after Bush's visit before Graham and DeMint begin singing from the same Social Security overhaul book.