Biden administration will look to expedite getting Tubman on $20 bill

The Biden administration is looking at ways to speed up the process of putting Harriet Tubman’s image on the $20 bill after the effort stalled under the Trump administration.

“The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriett Tubman on the front of the $20 notes,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing with reporters.

“It’s important that our notes, our money … reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that,” she added. “So we’re exploring ways to speed up that effort.”

The Treasury Department is working to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, @PressSec Jen Psaki said at a White House briefing pic.twitter.com/MThVjDbBBG

— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) January 25, 2021

The Treasury Department announced in April 2016, during the Obama administration, that Tubman would replace former President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill. Then-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said at the time that a design for the new bills featuring the civil rights icon could be unveiled in 2020, in time for the centennial of the passage of women’s suffrage.

But the initiative hit a wall under the Trump administration. Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers in 2019 that the effort to put Tubman on the $20 bill would be delayed until 2028.

Former President Trump himself had expressed opposition to putting Tubman on the $20 bill at the time it was first announced, calling it “pure political correctness” during the 2016 campaign.