Sizing Up the Savings Plans: The big winners would be people living at the top of Money Peak. The losers? Lower-paid workers might be cut out of company plans.

Publication: Newsweek

Publication Date: 17-FEB-03

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Byline: Jane Bryant Quinn

Saving money tax-free? Who could resist? With war fever climbing and stocks still running scared, President Bush has popped a surprise on American savers. He proposes to simplify the crazy patchwork of savings plans on the market today. In place of nine types of retirement plans and two higher-education plans, all with different rules, he'd offer three options. Two of them would let you build and spend your savings free of federal tax.

Congress is pretty cool to most of the ideas, which were dropped on its head without any warning. But don't dismiss the plans just because they're going nowhere now. Bush has a larger purpose than merely streamlining the savings system.

Radical conservatives, who count the president among their number, want to eliminate...

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