AOL News

With all the focus on health care this week, it would be easy to overlook an event in Washington that could ultimately make a significant difference in the financial future of our country's next generation.

With little fanfare, a bipartisan bill -- yes, you heard that right -- was introduced in the House of Representatives that would set up savings accounts for every newborn in the country and seed them with $500. It seems like a small idea, but it's potential is huge if it helps turn around a silent crisis in the U.S. -- financial illiteracy.

"Not much new," said Len Nichols, a health economist at the centrist New America Foundation and a veteran of the Clinton administration's try at health care reform. "This is a signal the president is willing to fight for what the Senate and House have produced, and to contrast it with the Republican alternatives, whatever they are. This a teachable moment. I hope the country is ready to learn what is really in these bills."

In a joint statement, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for Economic Development and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said that in their prior public service Bowles and Simpson "have demonstrated the skills that will be needed to forge consensus on difficult policy choices."

"There is a huge capital outlay for this project," says Sascha Meinrath, research director of the New America Foundation's wireless future program. ...

The president's budget elevates the issue of fiscal responsibility (good), but fails to achieve it (not good).

President Obama proposes spending $3.8 trillion next year and borrowing $1.3 trillion of that. The massive deficits the nation now faces would gradually fall to $706 billion in 2014, before rising back to just over $1 trillion by 2020.

Gore to Endorse Obama? (AOL News)