Remember who is on the $50 Federal Reserve Note?
Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., is betting most people don’t remember that it is Ulysses S. Grant, 19th century Civil War general and a former President of the United States.
Instead, McHenry proposes using a portrait of Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States.
“Every generation needs its own heroes,” McHenry said in a press release.
“One decade into the 21st century, it’s time to honor the last great President of the 20th and give President Reagan a place beside Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy.”
The press release also contends that Reagan is more popular than Grant, consistently outranking Grant in opinion polls, and notes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s depiction is already on the dime and that of John F. Kennedy is on the half dollar.
Called the “President Ronald Reagan $50 Bill Act,” McHenry’s legislation, H.R. 4705, has 16 co-sponsors (a majority is 218 in the House of Representatives) and it was referred to the House Committee on Financial Services after its Feb. 25 introduction.
It’s not the first proposal to place Reagan on the nation’s currency. Others have included replacing Alexander Hamilton on the $10 and Andrew Jackson on the $20. In 2004, the year of Reagan’s death, a suggestion that Reagan replace Roosevelt on the dime was scotched by Nancy Reagan herself.
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