Dem
47
GOP
53
Earlier this week, we had an item about the disastrous Great American State Fair. Trump does a lot of odd things, but he's always been very image-conscious. So, we just do not understand why the administration keeps making choices that are so obviously going to lead to embarrassing conclusions.
Today is something that's been kicking around for several weeks, and that is in the same vein, namely the proposed Trump $250 bill. There are a bunch of mockups that have been prepared on the orders of Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent; this is the one that seems to be favored by him:
Can't they find one decent graphic artist in Washington, DC? We could slap something together that looks considerably more professional than this in 10 minutes in Photoshop. Maybe in 5 minutes.
(Note: Z doesn't actually use Photoshop, because he hates subscription-model software. He actually uses Affinity Photo, but nobody knows what it means when you say "they did a bad job of Affinity Photoing that.")
Anyhow, it is all good and well to talk about issuing Trump-branded currency. But there are several rather serious problems with this plan. First, it is ostensibly meant to be in honor of the nation's 250th birthday, which has arrived. Even if it was "all systems go" today, it is no small thing to do the necessary engravings, get the plates made, get the testing done, get the currency produced, and get it into circulation. We seriously doubt it could be done by the end of the year, much less anytime sooner.
The second problem is that it's not legal to put living people on U.S. currency. It's been illegal since the passage of what is known as the Thayer Amendment, in 1866. Some readers will know the backstory here, especially since we've mentioned it before, but what happened, in brief, is that Congress intended to order currency honoring William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame. However, the enabling legislation was vague enough that any "Clark" fit its terms. And so, Superintendent of the National Currency Bureau Spencer Clark decided that it would be even better if the bill honored... Superintendent of the National Currency Bureau Spencer Clark. This did not please the Congress, hence the law to stop such a thing from happening again.
Of course, Congress can change laws if it so desires. However, a bill revising the Thayer Act would have to get through the Senate, which is now home to at least 51 people who aren't too keen on finding ways to honor Trump. And even if most or all of the Republicans (plus Sen. John Fetterman, "D"-PA) were OK with the plan, such a measure would be filibusterable. There is absolutely no way that Senate Democrats would allow currency with Trump's portrait on it; their base would be after them with pitchforks and torches. There's also no way that such a measure survives a Byrd Bath, and so gets tucked into the reconciliation bill that might or might not happen.
A third problem, related to the second, is that Trump owns the rights to his image, and would be entitled to payment for every Trump $250 produced. Oh, he might say he'll forego such payments, but we saw how long that promise held up with, say, Trump Airport. We cannot imagine that Republican budget hawks, like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), would ever agree to a scenario where the U.S. Treasury is paying royalties to Trump, especially since there are plenty of perfectly good and royalty-free dead people to put on the $250, if it's really necessary to produce such a denomination.
A fourth problem is money laundering. Many people who are trying to combat money laundering, especially relating to drugs, hate the $100 bill since that is the currency of choice for many money launderers. Forcing them to use $20 bills would increase the size of weight of their suitcases 5x and put a real crimp in their ability to move large sums of cash around. Having a banknote with a higher denomination than $100 in circulation would make stopping money laundering even harder. Could that be a feature rather than a bug for Trump? Donald Trump Jr. once said: "In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
So, there's no way this happens, and it's entirely foreseeable that it's eventually going to go belly up, the way that the Great American State Fair went belly up. While we can accept that the a**-kissers in the administration just seize every opportunity they see to brown nose, and don't worry about how it's going to turn out, the fact is that when failure and embarrassment come, Trump is invariably furious (see, for example, his angry tweets about Freedom 250, or about the Kennedy Center re-naming). Is someone like Scott Bessent simultaneously hoping that Trump will remember who was responsible for the $250 when the project is announced, but will forget who was responsible once it flops? We guess that must be it, but it's not a very satisfying explanation.
And wait, there's more. While much energy is apparently being put into the Trump $250, Bessent announced yesterday that he has canceled the longstanding plan to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. Not too surprising, since Trump is not much a fan of Black people, is definitely not a fan of Black history, and positively hates to be reminded of slavery. However, the Democrats almost couldn't write a better script here, particularly when it comes to Black voters. Something along the lines of: "It's pretty clear what Trump's priorities are, when he's pushing the Trump $250 at the same time he's canceling the Tubman $20." (Z)