WASHINGTON — The trustees of Social Security and Medicare are certain to kick off a fierce round of debate when they release their annual assessment of the fiscal health of the government’s two biggest benefit programs.

The battle will be waged not only between the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Bush but also in this year’s presidential campaign, where the issue is expected to attract a lot of attention in light of the looming retirement of 78 million baby boomers.

All sides will try to use today’s report to score political points, but that is probably as far as the debate will go — at least until a new president takes office next year.

Bush, who had vowed to make overhauling Social Security a top priority of his second term, will almost certainly leave office with that goal unfulfilled given that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, his point person on the issue, has not made any headway with Democrats in Congress in finding a compromise to resolve the pension program’s fiscal problems.

Democrats contend that Bush lost valuable time after 2004 pushing a plan to allow workers to direct their payroll tax contributions into private accounts, an idea that went nowhere in Congress.

The new report is expected to make only small changes in the estimates made last year for when both trust funds will be depleted.

Last year’s report put the date for when Social Security would exhaust its trust fund resources at 2041 with the same date for Medicare put much sooner at 2019. Medicare is facing much more imminent problems because of soaring health care costs.