Thomas E. Petri: “Madam Speaker, although our economy remains strong, some of us in Congress believe that we should be focusing our…”

“Madam Speaker, although our economy remains strong, some of us in Congress believe that we should be focusing our efforts to find ways to address our Nation's high consumer debt, numerous bankruptcies, and unacceptably low savings rate. A way to focus our efforts on solving these problems without merely treating the symptoms is to increase our Nation's children's knowledge about and appreciation of financial literacy. I join my distinguished colleague the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) in expressing my view that educating our Nation's youth about personal finance should be a priority for our schools across the country. The Jumpstart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy recently found that the average student who graduates from high school lacks basic skills in the management of personal financial affairs. Students are unable to balance a checkbook and have little or no insight in the basic financial principles involved with earning, spending, saving, and investing. In its nationwide survey conducted in 1997, the Jumpstart Coalition examined the knowledge of over 1,500 12th graders. On average, survey respondents answered only 57 percent of the questions correctly, and only 5 percent of the respondents received a grade of C or better.”