Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slammed the Trump administration over its decision to delay releasing an updated $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman.
“It is an insult to the hopes of millions that the Trump Administration is refusing to honor Harriet Tubman on our $20 bill. This unnecessary decision must be reversed,” Pelosi tweeted Thursday.
The Treasury Department was expected to release the updated bill in 2020, but announced last month that the project would be postponed for at least eight years.
{mosads}”The primary reason we’ve looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in May. “Based upon this, the $20 bill will now not come out until 2028. The $10 and the $50 will come out with new features beforehand.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday called for an investigation into the delay.
“I ask that you conduct an investigation into decisions made at the Treasury since January of 2018 regarding the delay of the redesign of the $20 note,” Schumer wrote in a letter to Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson.
“I also ask that you review the involvement of other participants in the interagency process related to the redesign – including the Secret Service, Federal Reserve, and the White House – to ensure that political considerations have not been allowed to infect the process for designing American currency.”
The delay was interpreted by some as an attempt to placate President Trump, who has often praised former President Andrew Jackson, who currently appears on the $20 bill. The president has suggested that Tubman can instead be placed on the $2 bill.
“Andrew Jackson had a great history, and I think it’s very rough when you take somebody off the bill,” Trump said in 2016.