From Daily Howler:
BUSH (2/4/05): Yes, ma’am.QUESTION: What will be the cost of the transition from the way Social Security is now to the way you’re proposing to do it?
BUSH: Yes, she’s asking about the cost of the transition. Estimated at about $600 billion over a ten-year period of time to get the personal accounts started on the—the way we’ve suggested they grow. It’s a good question.
“It’s a good question,” Bush told the young woman—and then he basically lied in her face, offering a baldly bogus reply to her seminal question. In fact, the transition to private accounts would cost trillions of dollars, over the course of the next several decades—perhaps $15 trillion in all, the Congressional Budget Office has said (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/2/05). This Sunday, even Cheney acknowledged, on Fox News Sunday, that transition costs would run in the trillions.