An American Lion

The Fifty Dollar Bill

I don’t have a problem with putting Ronald Reagan on the fifty dollar bill, other than the fact that few Americans have ever handled them. They’re rare, in other words, and that is no way to honor Reagan. He should be on the ten dollar bill, or even perhaps on a dollar coin, once we figure out how to get people to actually use the dollar coin.

Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) announced new legislation today, H.R. 4705, that would redesign the face of the $50 bill to include the likeness of our 40th President, Ronald Reagan. Indisputably one of transformative leaders of the 20th century, Reagan would have turned 99 years old this February.

“Every generation needs its own heroes,” said Congressman McHenry. “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.”

President Franklin Roosevelt’s likeness is on the dime and President John F. Kennedy is on the half-dollar.

“President Reagan was a modern day statesman, whose presidency transformed our nation’s political and economic thinking,” McHenry continued. “Through both his domestic and international policies he renewed America’s self confidence, defeated the Soviets and taught us that each generation must provide opportunity for the next.”

President Reagan would be replacing President Ulysses S. Grant on the bill. In polls of presidential scholars, President Reagan consistently outranks President Grant. In 2005, The Wall Street Journal conducted one such poll of bipartisan scholars which ranked President Reagan 6th and President Grant 29th.

The fifty dollar bill isn’t in widespread circulation; Reagan deserves a more fitting memorial. A fifth portrait on Mount Rushmore? Absolutely. I don’t think we’ve done enough to honor the man. I have always said that there should be a $35 dollar bill so that drug dealers have to work harder to count their money; we could move Hamilton to fifty, Grant to the $35, and Reagan to the $10. Who wouldn’t be thrilled with that arrangement?