http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/business/14savings.htmlBush Is Said to Weigh Changes to the Tax Code
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - Senior Bush administration officials said Thursday that they were considering plans to simplify the tax code and to revive earlier ideas for savings plans that would allow people to exclude almost all their investment income from taxes.
<snip>Another theme that Mr. Bush has stressed is the desire to encourage an "ownership society," in part by reducing taxes as much as possible on investment income.
Administration officials have long argued that Republicans' strongest political base is the so-called investor class, in which they include the tens of millions of people who own stocks and bonds either directly or through individual retirement accounts, 401(k) plans and other retirement programs.<snip>
"Eighty percent of Americans don't have any savings, and these accounts wouldn't do anything for them," said Edward J. McCaffery, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California and author of books on tax policy. <snip>
But over the long run, the new savings accounts could be highly costly. The Tax Policy Center, a research venture run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, estimated that the Treasury could lose as much as $300 billion over the next decade and more after that.