Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that designs for an updated $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman will be delayed by eight years.
Mnuchin told lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee that the redesign process, kicked off in 2016 during the Obama administration, would be delayed until 2028. The secretary said he would instead focus on anti-counterfeiting upgrades to the $10 and $50 bills.
“The primary reason we’ve looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues,” Mnuchin said. “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.”
{mosads}Mnuchin said it is “his responsibility” to focus on anti-counterfeiting and security features for other notes, and the decision on whether to change the imagery on the $20 bill isn’t likely to happen until 2026.
“The ultimate decision on the redesign will most likely be another secretary’s down the road,” he said.
Mnuchin’s predecessor, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, announced in April 2016 that Tubman would replace former President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill.
Lew ordered the Bureau of Printing and Engraving to accelerate the design process so that previews of the new $20 bills could be unveiled in 2020, the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.
Mnuchin has said over the past two years that he had not made a decision on whether to follow through with Lew’s plan.
But President Trump, who frequently praises Jackson, denounced changes to the $20 bill as “pure political correctness” in 2016, suggesting that Tubman could be featured on a new $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.
“I would love to see another denomination. … I think it would be more appropriate,” Trump said of Tubman, who he called “fantastic.”
Lawmakers have introduced bipartisan legislation that would order the Treasury Department to put Tubman on the $20 bill, but it’s unclear if it has enough support to pass both chambers. The measure is unlikely to win Trump’s support.