These companies are looking to acquire others to rapidly expand their revenue and assets, and to extract savings by consolidating operations.

But Big Three auto executives worry that they may have exhausted their ability to extract such savings.

The guiding principle should be to extract savings not from beneficiaries too poor to absorb the cost but from industries and institutions better able to bear the burden.

An even bigger worry is that the city extracted only modest savings on work rules and other hindrances to productivity in return for a pledge of no layoffs.

They can also extract savings by combining operations.

While abandoning the co-payment, Congressional negotiators have decided to extract savings from providers of home care by reducing the annual update in their Medicare payments.

Governors of both parties said the president should try to extract savings from drug companies as well as pharmacists.

Many proposals, including the Clinton plan, sought to extract substantial savings from the Medicare program by such means as raising the premiums paid by affluent retirees.

The approach is intended to show employees that they are not the only source from which American is extracting savings.

The administration also plans to try to extract additional savings by requiring workers to contribute to the cost of health benefits.