Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) is on a mission: he wants to get a woman’s picture placed on the $20 bill.
Gutierrez has introduced legisltion to move the idea forward in Congress. The Put a Woman on the Twenty Act (H.R. 1910) would not designate any particular woman for the $20 bill but would instead instruct the Secretary of the Treasury to nominate a woman for replacing Andrew Jackson’s picture.
The Congressman notes that his staffer brought him the idea for the legislation after she learned about the “Women on 20s” campaign on-line, a grassroots effort that has garnered more than half a million votes in support of putting a woman on our money.
Possible candidates that have been mentioned so far include Rosa Parks, Wilma Mankiller, Harriet Tubman, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
“My bill simply directs the Secretary of the Treasury to convene a panel of citizens to solicit recommendations from the public for a woman to be placed on the twenty dollar bill,” said Gutierrez. “When I go to the bank, when I use an ATM, when I travel overseas, the twenty dollar bill is already widely used and in the purses and wallets of hundreds of millions of people. We all know that the Almighty Dollar speaks. But what if it had a woman’s voice?”
Some of the Congressman’s recent remarks about the bill are available in the video above.
What do you think? Should Andrew Jackson’s picture be replaced with a woman’s picture on the $20 bill? Who would be your choice if so?
