WASHINGTON, D.C. — Adam Dubitsky strides in comfortably, wearing an olive-green suit and a silk tie. He sits down, apologizes for being 20 minutes late, then smiles and asks, “Want anything from the bar?”

Dubitsky, 29, is one of a new breed here in Washington. About a year and a half ago, he and two of his twentysomething friends organized the Fund for a New Generation, a PAC entirely devoted to the privatization of Social Security.

Always popular fodder for talk-radio disciples and economic pundits, Social Security now seems to have provided the rallying force for dawning Gen-X political groups like Dubitsky’s.

Meetings convene during Happy Hour. Fund-raising takes place at theme parties. Networking is done between innings of a Baltimore Orioles game. All the while, these young professionals consider what to do about benefits they’re not going to get.

“We want to be a clearinghouse of information for Generation X,” says Geoff Underwood, spokesman for America’s Future Foundation, a nonpartisan educational organization also in support of Social Security privatization.

“What we believe our generation wants is better opportunities and more individual control,” he says.

Dubitsky likens the current Social Security system to a sinking ship: “The faster it sinks, the more rowers are needed for manpower. And the greater the number of rowers aboard the ship, the faster it sinks.”

Hillary Beard, the 28-year-old spokeswoman for a nonpartisan task force named Economic Security 2000, travels nationwide to speak to all age groups about Social Security reform.

“You go out into the country and in a room of 200, 197 of them don’t think Social Security is going to be there,” Beard says.

“Seniors are petrified to death that they’re leaving a legacy of debt. They hate that. Baby Boomers are actually the most excited about change. Young people aren’t tuned-in enough yet. But none of them think it’s going to be there,” she says.

Underwood says he thinks those born between 1965 and 1977 have shown more self-reliance and enterprise than any other generation. “What we are is a generation that has had to grow up quickly,” he says.

He blames Boomer legislators for what he calls self-serving politicking. His organization, he says, is determined not to be like their parents.

“A lot of us were latchkey kids. We’re not expecting anyone to hand us anything. What we have is more an attitude of, ‘Just get the government out of our way, and let us make money.'”

Dubitsky doesn’t buy it.

“Clearly, I don’t speak for a generation, and neither do a group of young professionals in New York City.” (Here Dubitsky is speaking of the Third Millennium, an New York City organization for the young and political.) “And to claim that we do, I think, is a big mistake.”

Iowa State Political Science Professor Steffen Schmidt says he doesn’t like the Gen-X label. “There’s not one cookie-cutter for that group,” he says.

And despite Underwood’s allegations against the Boomers, Schmidt says he thinks the Social Security issue transcends age groups. “Instead of a generation war, I see it as more of a debate about different approaches to the problem,” he says. “I think that whole discussion is about what some of the alternatives are.”

It is nearly impossible to locate liberal Gen-X groups in Washington that have made Social Security reform their priority. But Schmidt says this should not be seen as a trend toward conservatism in the younger generation.

Instead, he says that in this case the liberals reflect the status quo. “The whole Social Security establishment was liberal,” he says. He adds that notions of privatization, which pervade reform discussions, are less conservative than they are market-oriented in nature.

For his part, Dubitsky sums up his goal in forming the Fund for a New Generation this way with another smile: “There has to be something to counter the AARP [American Association of Retired Persons].”