The recess begins with polls showing continued difficulty for President Bush as he presses his plan to create private investment accounts in the government pension program. A new poll by The New York Times shows that Mr. Bush's approval rating for his handling of Social Security has declined since January, when the political battle began in earnest. It reflects a trend found in other surveys, including a Washington Post-ABC News poll published Tuesday.

Yet, convinced that the public's outlook can still be molded, groups representing business, labor, retirees and a variety of other interests are planning a blitz of television, radio and newspaper advertising, as well as town hall meetings and rallies, for the two-week Easter recess.

Mr. Bush on Tuesday dismissed the recent polls that suggest he is not gaining ground with his proposal.

"I'm just getting started on this issue," he told reporters, "and I'm enjoying every minute of it." 

He said more Americans now recognized that there was a long-term solvency problem in Social Security, and added that "they're not going to like it when they see people not coming to the table" to negotiate.

The latest Times poll, conducted among 1,764 adults from last Wednesday to Monday, found that 30 percent of Americans now approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling Social Security, while 57 percent disapproved; the margin of sampling error was plus or minus two percentage points.

The same question asked in a Gallup poll conducted Jan. 7-9 found that 41 percent approved of the president's handling of the issue, while 52 percent did not.

Critics of Mr. Bush's plan hope to use the next few weeks to solidify and expand the opposition. A new labor-backed coalition called Americans United to Protect Social Security is planning forums around the country, some in districts represented by lawmakers "who need to be reminded" that they should "reject the president's privatization scheme," said one coalition leader, Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The coalition is inviting members of the House Ways and Means Committee who oppose the president's plan to moderate such forums. That will ensure, spokesmen for the group said, that voters in every Congressional district get a chance to be heard even if their own representative chooses not to hold a public meeting.

AARP, the lobby for older Americans, plans to start a nationwide campaign of radio and television commercials over the Congressional recess. In one radio spot beginning this weekend, a plumber brings in a wrecking crew to fix a homeowner's clogged drain. "If you had a problem with the kitchen sink, you wouldn't tear down the entire house," an announcer says amid sounds of jackhammers and chain saws. "So why dismantle the Social Security system with private accounts when it can be fixed with moderate changes?"

With 35 million members and a huge budget, AARP is a formidable obstacle to Mr. Bush's plan and a major target for several Republican groups. A business coalition supporting the president's proposal, the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America's Social Security, or Compass, is taking aim at AARP this week with a new poll and advertising campaign.
Compass says its polling of older Americans shows that a majority of those who are AARP members support private investment accounts for younger workers, so long as their own benefits remain unchanged. The coalition will begin running newspaper advertisements in Washington this week pointing to the poll results, and it sent a letter to AARP on Tuesday asking the organization to "reassess its hostility to Social Security reform and to craft a policy position that better reflects the views of its membership."

"It's a little bit about shaming them," Derrick Max, executive director of Compass, who wrote the letter, said of AARP's leaders. "If you point out to people that when seniors understand the issue, they support reform, that's important."

An AARP spokesman, Marty Davis, dismissed the poll as flawed and politically motivated.

On another front, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. announced on Tuesday that it would escalate its campaign against Mr. Bush's proposal by organizing protests, town hall meetings and other events in Washington and dozens of other cities on March 31.

The federation said several of that day's protests would seek to pressure Charles Schwab, an investment firm that labor leaders have described as particularly outspoken in support of the president's proposal, to withdraw that support. On Monday, the Financial Services Forum, an association of 19 chief executives of financial firms, said it was dropping out of Compass because the members were now split on whether to lobby for personal accounts.

Steven Greenhouse contributed reporting from New York for this article.