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As the president launched a two-day tour through the South to build support for his controversial plan to revamp Social Security, Democrats challenged a White House assertion that blacks would particularly gain from Bush's proposed private retirement accounts because they have fewer years to collect benefits considering they die younger.

"It is puzzling to me that we are even having this debate about whether Social Security is good or not for African-Americans," said Obama, an Illinois Democrat. "I frankly found the statement that the president made somewhat offensive."

While Bush argued his case that the future of the Social Security program was in peril without substantial changes like creating private investment accounts, Senate Democratic leaders tapped Obama to rebut the argument about overhauling Social Security.

Before the president arrived in Montgomery, Ala., Obama, the only black member of the Senate, conducted satellite interviews there from Washington.

"There is no doubt a disparity in the lifetime opportunities between white America and black America," Obama said. "The notion that we would cynically use those disparities as a rationale for dismantling Social Security as opposed to talking about how are we going to close the health disparities gap that exists, and make sure that African-American life expectancy is as long as the rest of this nation ... is stunning to me."