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Got my hands on the White House background briefing about the Social Security plan. The reporters in attendance obviously don't understand what's going on:

Senior Official: The first year that we envision that people would have a complete investment control of their personal accounts -- 2009. . . . We would have people born in 1965 and earlier participating in the accounts in those years. . . . In the second year of implementation, the opportunity to invest in the personal accounts would be extended to those born in 1978 and earlier. And then in the third year of implementation, all eligible workers would be able to participate in personal accounts if they chose. . . . The size of the personal accounts would be limited to 4 percent of a worker's wages from their payroll taxes. But there would be a cap placed on the accounts in the first year -- contributions to the accounts of $1,000. Now, each year that cap thereafter would rise in increments of $100 on top of the natural wage growth that drives the growth in payroll taxes. And what that means is that over time, more and more of the work force would be able to contribute the full 4 percent of their wages to the personal accounts. . . . Our estimate of the total amount of transition financing for the accounts, according to the schedule that I've outlined before, is about $664 billion through the end of the budget window of 2015. If you assume that -- debt service effects on top of that, that would be another $90 billion. . . .

REPORTER: You talked about the $664 billion for the near-term costs. There's been a lot of speculation in advance that it would be something like $2 trillion. Talk a little bit more about that. How do you square that?

SENIOR OFFICIAL: : I don't want to say too much about it. Obviously, the $2 trillion number is not a number that was ever generated by us or by the Social Security actuaries, or any of the other nonpartisan scoring agencies. There were different assumptions that went into that number, and they reflected, I think, the thinking of other people beyond the scoring agencies.

The reason the senior official's estimate is so low is simply that he's only calculating the costs up to 2015 and his initiative is going to be slowly phased in starting until 2009. The transition costs will bump upwards in 2010 and 2011 as larger classes of people begin to move their payroll taxes out of the Social Security system and as the cap is gradually raised from $1,000 or 4 percent of income (whichever is less) to a straight-up 4 percent of income. This is, admittedly, somewhat complicated, but there's no sense in sending a reporter to a background briefing about a policy initiative the White House is trying to sell unless the reporter is capable of understanding the relevant issues. Someone, at least, had the balls to ask the briefer what kind of benefit cuts this proposal is supposed to entail, prompting the briefer to punt.