Grant May No Longer be on The $50 Bill
McHenry wants to take Grant off the fifty and put Ronald Reagan.
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Irritated by the reality that the only modern presidents honored on our currency are both Democrats (JFK and FDR), a North Carolina congressman is trying to get Ronald Reagan a position in our wallets. Rep. Patrick McHenry wants to kick Ulysses S. Grant off the $50 bill and replace him with Reagan. Only problem: Many consider Grant a hero in African American history. Is McHenry’s proposal too controversial?
This is just partisan grandstanding: Let me get this straight, says Ezra Klein in The Washington Post. Patrick McHenry wants to send Obama, our nation’s first black president, legislation that would erase — “the guy who won the Civil War” — and replace him with — “the guy who cut a lot of taxes”?
Reagan deserves the recognition: Grant may have won the Civil War, says Mark Whittington in Associated Content, but Ronald Reagan’s Cold War hard line brought down the Soviet Union. As for Reagan’s tax cuts, they helped the country break through the 1970s’ stagflation rut and debatably made life better for all Americans. Putting his face on the $50 bill is the least we can do to show our gratitude.
Why would Republicans want to diss Grant? GOP stalwarts like McHenry should “be standing up for Grant as one of the leading figures of their party’s founding,” says Matthew Yglesias in Think Progress. Grant “did more for African-Americans than any leader between Lincoln and Johnson.” Why strip him of one of the “slight ways in which this nation honors him”?
Why not sub Reagan in for Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, instead? Ronald Reagan already has an airport named after him in Washington, D.C., says Johanna Neuman in the Los Angeles Times. If Rep. McHenry doesn’t think that’s enough, there are ways to honor him. McHenry might “get more footing” trying to bump Andrew Jackson — who, after all, opposed paper money.
“The $50 question: Grant or Reagan?”
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