Mnuchin won’t commit to Tubman on $20 bill
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is raising speculation that Harriet Tubman’s future on the $20 bill could be in jeopardy.
In a CNBC interview, Mnuchin on Thursday avoided a direct answer when asked whether he supported the decision made by the Obama administration to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Tubman, the 19thcentury African-American abolitionist who was a leader in the Underground Railroad.
“People have been on the bills for a long period of time,” he said. “This is something we’ll consider. Right now, we have a lot more important issues to focus on.”
During last year’s campaign, Donald Trump praised Jackson, the nation’s seventh president and said the decision to replace his portrait with that of Tubman was “pure political correctness.”
Trump and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, had both suggested during the GOP primaries that Tubman might go on the $2 bill instead.
Then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced last year that he had decided to place Tubman on the $20 bill as part of a makeover of the nation’s currency to improve security features on the bills.
In the CNBC interview, Mnuchin said, “The number one issue why we change the currency is to stop counterfeiting. So the issues of why we change it will be primarily related to what we need to do for security purposes.”
Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, both Maryland Democrats, wrote a letter to Mnuchin on Thursday urging him not to abandon plans to place Tubman, who was born in Maryland as a slave, on the $20 bill.
“Those we honor on currency make a statement about our nation and our values,” the senators wrote.