GOP senator: Keep Hamilton on the $10 bill, take Jackson off $20 bill
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) says Alexander Hamilton deserves to stay on the $10 bill because of his service as the first secretary of Treasury.
He added that a woman deserves to grace the paper currency of the United States, but suggested the $20 bill, which currently bares the face of former president Andrew Jackson, as the more appropriate denomination.
{mosads}“My better idea is if you are going to replace somebody off of one of the bills – which I have no problem with a lady being on one of the bills – that you would replace the 20,” Lankford said on “Kilmeade and Friends” earlier this week, as first reported by BuzzFeed News.
He said Jackson, who ordered the removal of several Native American tribes in the infamous “Trail of Tears,” had a “pretty checkered history.”
“He was a rugged mountain man to say the least, but he was also the one that relocated Native American tribes out of all of the southeastern part of the United States and did forcible removal, and tens of thousands of Native Americans died on the Trail of Tears and other things,” Lankford said.
“So if we are going to remove someone, which I have no problem with doing, then let’s do the 20, not the 10, the very first secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton,” he added.
Hamilton, who has enjoyed a popular revival due to the Broadway musical about his life story, has been slated by the Treasury Department to be removed from the $10 bill in favor of a woman.
The finalists for the new currency, which is scheduled to be unveiled in 2020, are Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks and Wilma Mankiller.
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