In a briefing on the President’s budget last week, OMB director Josh Bolten played yet more games with the phony deficit reduction plan. Here’s Reuters:

Joshua Bolten, the White House budget director, played down the impact of the private accounts on future budget deficits, saying it “is still consistent with the president’s goal to cut the deficit in half by 2009” and will not hurt the economy.

But when you read the fine print, you’ll discover that the private accounts only start in 2009 under Bush’s proposal and ramp up in cost dramatically after that. According to Reuters, “When these transition costs are factored into the administration’s budget forecasts, the deficit would grow by $23 billion in fiscal 2009 to $256 billion, and by $56.5 billion in fiscal 2010 to $263.5 billion, White House budget officials said.”

Bolten’s response?

Bolten said the impact on deficits would grow in the years that follow, but he offered no specifics.

“I expect it would ramp up. I don’t have numbers for that, but I expect it would become larger as a nominal figure beyond 2010,” he said.

Thanks Josh! Even though Dick Cheney has admitted that private accounts would cost trillions in later decades, all Bolten is willing to concede is that “it would become larger as a nominal figure beyond 2010” – phrasing that falsely suggests that the increased costs simply represent inflation.

Update 2/14: The Washington Post has more on how “Bush’s extensive tax cuts, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit and, if it passes, his plan to redesign Social Security all balloon in cost several years from now.” It’s what one analyst calls “a budgetary perfect storm.” And it’s been obscured by the sort of trickery used by Bolten above.