Biden moving forward with placing Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire hasn’t let up on the fight to put abolitionist and political activist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. And with the Biden Administration announcing its intention to make the long-awaited change, Tubman is poised to become the first woman ever to be printed on a bill. And after years of advocating for it, Shaheen is finally poised to take a victory lap.

“Our paper currency is how we measure value in our society, and the fact that we haven't had any women on our paper currency is a suggestion that we don't value the contributions of women in the way that we should,” Shaheen told NBC News’ Know Your Value. “I'm so excited to see the new administration say that they're going to make this a priority.”

The redesigned $20 bill was announced during President Obama’s second term, after the Treasury Department launched a poll to get public input on who should replace former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

“The decision to put Harriet Tubman on the new $20 bill was driven by thousands of responses we received from Americans young and old,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in 2016. “I have been particularly struck by the many comments and reactions from children for whom Harriet Tubman is not just a historical figure, but a role model for leadership and participation in our democracy.”

As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Tubman led enslaved people from the South to freedom in the Northern states and Canada. She also served as a soldier and spy for the Union Army during the Civil War.

The new bill was expected to go into circulation in 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted some women the right to vote. (Crucially, many women of color, including Black women and Native women, were excluded from the women’s suffrage movement.)

But despite the fanfare and planning, the effort languished under the Trump Administration. Trump favored Jackson, a former Army general and slaveholder who is perhaps best known for his role in the forced relocation of Native Americans that robbed them of their land and resulted in thousands of deaths.

While Jackson’s image now graces one of the most-circulated bills in U.S. currency, as president he engaged in a bitter fight with the country’s national bank and actually warned against the use of paper money. As a candidate Trump called the Tubman plan “pure political correctness” and proposed printing the former slave-turned-abolitionist’s image on the $2 bill instead.

“Given the other actions of the Trump Administration, I was not surprised, I will be honest,” Shaheen said. “But that's why it's so exciting now to see that we have a president who recognizes that we need to reflect our society as a whole in everything we do… Having Harriet Tubman on the $20 shows that we value what she did, that we value women, that we value people of color. And I think for so many reasons, it's a very exciting signal to people throughout our country.”

Sunday's Motivation

Sharing a little Sunday Wisdom...from NO MERCY, Book Two of The Encounter Series.

Giving up on your goals because of temporary setbacks is almost as bad as slashing your own tires because you got a flat.

Establishing obtainable goals is one heck of a challenge. I know this personally as I have had one devastating challenge after another in the last month and a half.

Unfortunately...we have experienced some small delays in our book release coupled with unexpected adjustments but we're back on track.

We're currently working on setting our book price and pre-sale date and releasing our Book Collection Cards to our valued fans and Subscribers to our website. Talk about excited! I/m pretty sure you are as anxious as we are to see the finished product.

I can't wait to get it in my hands.

Can the President Control Gas Prices?

Price of a gallon of gas have dropped in 2020 because demand has dropped as the coronavirus pandemic surges.

However, critics of any president are quick to blame the commander in chief for things that are totally beyond his or her control. (Of course, presidents and their supporters are equally quick to take credit for things that are beyond their control.) The price of gasoline is a perfect example. Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans took credit for low gasoline prices in 2019 [source: Rainey]. And when George W. Bush was in office, Democrats blamed him for allowing gas prices to rise from $1.45 a gallon on his inauguration day to $4.05 a gallon by June 2008 [source: Thaler].

The truth is that no president — Democrat or Republican, friend of "big oil" or supporter of alternative fuels — can do much of anything to affect the short-term price of oil, and therefore gasoline. The overriding factor that determines the price of oil from day to day is the market principle of supply and demand [source: U.S. Energy Information Administration]. It comes down to simple economics: When demand is greater than supply, prices rise.

The actual price of a barrel of oil is constantly changing, since oil is a commodity that is traded on the futures market. Buying and selling oil futures is called speculating, because you're making trades based on expectations of future supply and demand. And for a while, demand was skyrocketing. After the Great Recession ended, demand steadily increased as the global economy recovered and kicked back into high gear. To match that demand, U.S. oil production rose dramatically from around 5,000 barrels a day in 2009 to a record high of 13,100 barrels a day in early 2020 [source: Macrotrends]. Thanks in large part to the drilling technology called hydraulic fracturing (or " fracking"), American oil producers were able to keep pace with demand and keep gasoline prices stable. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic slashed global demand and hit the oil and gas industry hard. One upside of the global oil glut is lower gasoline prices at the pump [source: Associated Press].

So if gasoline prices are largely at the mercy of global fluctuations in supply and demand (plus the occasional pandemic), what can a president actually do, if anything, to influence gas prices? Find out next.

Gas Prices and the Oil Supply What about increasing the oil supply? Can't the president boost U.S. production? It's true that aggressive increases in U.S. oil production would bring the global supply closer to the demand for oil. Unfortunately, the U.S. is such a small player on the international oil scene — America controls only 4 percent of the world's oil reserves — that even if the U.S. doubl its current production capacity, still wouldn't make much of a dent [sources: NS Energy and Thaler]. It would also take a number of years to assemble the drilling rigs, pipelines and crew to make that type of production increase, meaning oil prices would be unaffected in the short term. The only way the president can quickly boost the oil supply to lower gasoline prices is by tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an emergency stockpile of more than 700 million barrels of crude oil stored along the U.S. Gulf Coast (a barrel of oil equals about 159 liters, or 42 gallons). In June 2011, President Obama released 30 million barrels of oil from the emergency reserves in response to crises in Libya and Yemen. President Bush also tapped the reserves in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, temporarily lowering gas prices 10 to 15 percent [source: The New York Times]. Experts agree, however, that these reserves should be used for emergencies only, not employed as temporary relief to market-driven problems. Author's Note: Can the President Control Gas Prices?

While gas prices might be a controversial topic for politicians, it's an easy one for economists. Virtually all economists agree that the U.S. president has very little control over the global price of crude oil, and therefore the local price of gasoline. If we can't rely on our leaders to help lower our fuel costs, we should rely on ourselves. The hard truth is that it's within our power to decrease the amount we spend on gas simply by driving less. I say it's a hard truth, because like most of you I depend on my car for all sorts of "important" things and resist the idea of cutting back. If I could afford a brand-new hybrid, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. In the meantime, the best thing I can do to lower gas prices is to lower the demand, one "staycation" at a time.