GOP Lawmaker: Put Reagan on $50 Bill

A North Carolina congressman is trying to ensure Ronald Reagan a “place of honor on our nation’s currency” by replacing Ulysses S. Grant’s mug on the $50 dollar bill with the Gipper’s. Republican Patrick T. McHenry has introduced legislation ahead of next year's centennial of Reagan's birth. “President Reagan is indisputably one of the most transformative presidents of the 20th century,” he writes in a letter seeking support for his bill.

Democrats aren’t buying it. Reagan’s “policies are still controversial," a congressman tells the Los Angeles Times, and “our currency ought to be something that unites us.” Similar efforts have failed previously. A Grant scholar, meanwhile, is “very upset” about the idea. “I have all the respect in the world for Reagan, but what he accomplished is not anywhere as important as what Ulysses S. Grant accomplished.”

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