Representative Mannion Continues to Seek Answers From Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Harriet Tubman $20 Bill Redesign and Taxpayer Spending

The Honorable Scott Bessent

Secretary of the Treasury

U.S. Department of the Treasury

1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20220

Dear Secretary Bessent:

We write to follow up on your Department's response to our August 14 letter urging the

Department to resume the indefinitely paused 10-year-effort to place abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill, as it does not adequately address the status of this initiative. We again request clarification on the status of the redesign, as well as the past progress and investment Treasury has made toward this effort.

When we wrote to you in August, we requested the Department resume its long-overdue effort to portray Harriet Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill and provide a detailed update on the current status of the project. Unfortunately, your September response failed to address either request. In fact, your response failed toarticulate whether or not this initiative has been delayed or permanently discontinued. Therefore, we write again to request a detailed accounting of prior efforts at Treasury to advance former Secretary Lew's announcement that Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill, including specific actions taken and resources expended. In addition, we request an update on the current status of the project and proposed timeline for next steps.

In seeking increased transparency, we ask the following:

• Since the April 2016 announcement, how much has the Department and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing spent in developing the new "Catalyst" series $20 note?

• Of those costs, how much were dedicated toward the Tubman redesign, including but not limited to engraving, design work, plate development, and any other design and production-related activities?

Taxpayers deserve a return on their investments. Given the significant resources - financial and otherwise - already devoted to this effort, abandoning the redesign before completion would be a waste of taxpayer resources.

We understand and appreciate the counterfeiting and security concerns that guide the

development and timelines of currency designs and redesigns and agree that the Department should prioritize a process that addresses those concerns. Thankfully, there is an easy solution to this theoretical challenge. In moving forward with currency design and development, we urge you to ensure a thorough and robust anti-counterfeiting process. To that end, we encourage the Treasury to work with the Anti-Counterfeiting Deterrence (ACD) Committee to identify a path forward that resumes the Department's prior work to place Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill while addressing any potential counterfeiting or security concerns.

We also urge you to apply and follow this anti-counterfeiting process consistently across the board when it comes to other current and potential future currency redesigns and new designs. As we noted in our initialAugust letter, the Department has debuted a design for and advanced plans to develop a new $250 paper currency note featuring President Trump's likeness that would be ready to go into production as soon as Congressional authorization could be granted.

Again, in seeking transparency, we then ask the following:

• If this newly proposed $250 note can be designed and prepared for production as soon as Congress authorizes it-even before anti-counterfeiting measures are finalized-why is the Tubman redesign timeline being handled differently?

• Has the proposed $250 note undergone any anti-counterfeiting and security review to date? If so, what have those efforts looked like, and what was the timeline? If not, what would those efforts look like and what would their timeline be?

In addition to providing answers to the enumerated questions, we again urge you to resume and implement the now long-overdue effort to portray Harriet Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill prior to developing new currency notes.

Thank you for your continued attention to this matter, and we look forward to receiving a timely response.