Treasury Secretary Bessent Advances Plan for New $250 Bill Denomination

On May 28, 2026, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stood at the White House podium and held up a printout. It depicted a $250 Federal Reserve note bearing President Donald Trump's portrait — the same image that hangs on banners draped across federal buildings in Washington — alongside Trump's signature and a logo marking the nation's 250th anniversary [1][2].

"We've created the bill," Bessent told reporters. "We have to be prepared." He quickly added the caveat: "The president doesn't do it; the House and the Senate have to do it" [1].

That caveat is doing considerable work. Between Bessent's prepared design and an actual $250 note passing across a store counter lies a 160-year-old federal law, a stalled piece of legislation with no Democratic cosponsors, an open question about Federal Reserve authority, and a declining market for high-denomination cash in the first place.

The Legal Wall: An 1866 Law and a Living President

The core obstacle is the Thayer Amendment, passed on April 7, 1866, and codified at 31 U.S.C. § 5114(b). It states that "no portrait or likeness of any living person shall be engraved or placed upon any of the bonds, securities, notes, or postal currency of the United States" [3][4].

The law exists because of an act of vanity. In the 1860s, a Treasury Department official named Spencer Clark placed his own portrait on fractional currency that had been meant to honor explorer William Clark. Congress, embarrassed, banned the practice entirely [3].

To override the Thayer Amendment, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) introduced H.R. 1761, the "Donald J. Trump $250 Bill Act," on February 27, 2025. The bill would amend the Federal Reserve Act to require the Treasury Secretary to print $250 Federal Reserve notes featuring Trump's portrait within one year of enactment. It would carve out an exception to the living-person ban for anyone who "is or has been the President of the United States" [5][6].

As of late May 2026, H.R. 1761 has accumulated thirteen Republican cosponsors, zero Democratic ones, and has sat in the House Financial Services Committee without a hearing or markup for over a year [5]. A GOP aide told NBC News that the legislation has been "greenlit for a committee hearing," but no date has been set [7].

The Federal Reserve Question

Even if Congress passes H.R. 1761, another institutional hurdle looms. Under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces currency notes "at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System" [8]. The Fed acts as the issuing authority for Federal Reserve notes and submits annual print orders to the BEP specifying how many notes of each denomination to produce [9].

Whether the Federal Reserve Board holds an effective veto over a new denomination is legally ambiguous. The Secretary of the Treasury has authority over currency design, but the Fed controls issuance. A former BEP Director emphasized that a $250 note is "not statutorily authorized" under current law and that Treasury would need explicit congressional direction before production could begin [10]. If Congress passes a law mandating the denomination, it would likely supersede any Fed discretion — but absent that legislation, the Fed could simply decline to order the notes.

Who Pushed This — and Who Pushed Back

The Washington Post reported that U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach, a Trump appointee, provided the Bureau of Engraving and Printing with the design for the new bill last fall. British artist Iain Alexander designed it, featuring Trump's portrait and a 250th anniversary logo [11][1].

Beach reportedly urged the BEP to expedite the process. The bureau's director, Patricia Solimene, resisted, noting the legal prohibition on depicting living persons. She was subsequently reassigned against her will [1][11]. Acting engraving director Michael Brown has since been overseeing the process.

Bessent has sought to frame the effort as routine preparation. "It's all in the hands of Capitol Hill," he said. "We prepared things in advance... but we will stick to the law" [2].

The Inflation Argument: Does America Need a Bigger Bill?

Supporters of the $250 denomination invoke an inflation-based argument. When the federal government last circulated high-denomination bills — the $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 notes — in 1969, the $100 bill had roughly nine times its current purchasing power. Adjusted for inflation, $100 in 1969 is equivalent to approximately $907 in 2026 [12].

Source: BLS CPI Inflation Calculator

Data as of May 1, 2026CSV

By this logic, the $100 bill is severely underweight for the economy it circulates in. The $500 note discontinued in 1969 would be worth roughly $4,500 today. A $250 bill would represent, in inflation-adjusted terms, about $27.50 in 1969 dollars — less than a $50 bill bought in that era.

The Consumer Price Index stood at 332.41 in April 2026, up 3.8% year-over-year, meaning inflation continues to erode the $100 bill's utility [13].

Source: FRED / Bureau of Labor Statistics

Data as of Apr 1, 2026CSV

But the inflation argument runs into a complication: Americans are using less cash, not more.

The Cash Paradox: A New Bill for a Shrinking Market

Cash accounted for just 14% of all U.S. transactions in 2024, nearly halving from 31% in 2016 [14]. The Federal Reserve's Diary of Consumer Payment Choice shows a steady decline across every demographic group, with adults aged 18 to 24 using cash for only 10% of payments [15].

Source: Federal Reserve Payments Study

Data as of Jan 1, 2025CSV

For large purchases — the transactions where a $250 bill would theoretically prove useful — cash is even less common. Cash use is "heavily concentrated in small-dollar purchases, tipping, and among older, lower-income, and unbanked consumers," with nearly half of transactions under $10 made with cash but a far smaller share above $100 [15][16].

Households earning under $25,000 per year rely on cash for 24% of payments, compared to 9% for households earning over $150,000 [15]. The demographic groups most dependent on cash are the least likely to transact in $250 increments.

Projections indicate that by 2028, 95.8% of U.S. payments will be cashless [16]. A new high-denomination bill would enter circulation just as the medium it serves continues to shrink.

The Illicit Finance Problem

Critics of high-denomination notes point to a well-documented relationship between large bills and criminal activity. Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff has estimated that more than one-third of all U.S. paper currency is used by criminals and tax cheats [17]. Of the 19.9 billion $100 bills currently in circulation — compared to 15.2 billion $1 bills — a disproportionate share appears to be held outside normal consumer channels [17].

The concern is straightforward: larger bills make it physically easier to move illicit cash. A Harvard study found that $1 million in €500 notes weighs about five pounds and fits in a small bag [18]. A $250 bill would double the value-to-weight ratio of the current highest U.S. denomination.

When the European Central Bank stopped issuing the €500 note in 2019, the stated rationale was its role in money laundering and terrorism financing. The UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency had reported that 90% of all €500 notes sold in the UK were "in the hands of organised crime" [18]. Europol found that 56% of EU citizens had never even seen a €500 note [18].

The results of the EU's elimination were mixed. A CEPR analysis found that removing the €500 note would "not eliminate tax evasion, crime, terrorism, and corruption, but it would make life harder for those pursuing such activities, raising their costs and increasing the risks of detection" [19]. Criminal networks adapted to other instruments — cryptocurrency, smaller denominations, trade-based money laundering — but at higher cost and greater exposure to surveillance.

The lesson for the $250 bill proposal: introducing a new high denomination would move in the opposite direction from the global trend, reducing friction for illicit cash transfers rather than increasing it.

Who Benefits?

If the $250 bill serves a limited transactional purpose for ordinary consumers and increases risks of illicit use, who stands to gain?

Cash-intensive industries offer one answer. Sectors like cannabis — still federally illegal and largely locked out of the banking system — conduct enormous volumes of cash transactions [17]. Construction, agriculture, and certain service industries in regions with large unbanked populations also handle significant cash. But these industries already function with $100 bills, and adding a $250 note does not resolve the underlying banking-access issues that force them into cash dependence.

The more plausible beneficiary is political. The bill is explicitly tied to the U.S. Semiquincentennial — the 250th anniversary of American independence on July 4, 2026. Bessent said he didn't "think that there's anything untoward about having the President of the United States, the person who was President of the United States on the 250th anniversary bill" [7]. The denomination — $250 for the 250th year — is commemorative by design. Critics have been more blunt, arguing the move "elevate[s] Trump to the status of a monarch" [7] and that currency "in the thick of political combat" strips meaning from the honor [10].

The Cost and Timeline Question

Creating a new denomination is not cheap or fast. The most recent precedent — the redesigned $100 bill — was announced on April 21, 2010, and did not enter circulation until October 8, 2013, a delay of three and a half years [20]. The holdup was a manufacturing flaw: as many as 30% of the new notes were unusable due to a creasing problem during printing, shutting down production in December 2010 [20].

The new $100 bill cost 12.5 cents per note to produce [20]. A $250 note would require its own anti-counterfeiting features, its own security testing by the Secret Service, and massive coordination with the Federal Reserve's cash distribution network, ATM manufacturers, and vending machine operators. No public cost-benefit analysis of the $250 denomination has been released.

Even under an optimistic timeline, if H.R. 1761 passed tomorrow, the BEP would need years — not months — to design security features, test them against counterfeiting, tool up production lines, and coordinate distribution. The semiquincentennial deadline of July 4, 2026, is effectively impossible for actual circulation.

What Currency Economists Say

The divide between the proposal's political supporters and currency economists is stark. Economists who study denominations have generally argued that new denominations should respond to demonstrated transactional demand, not political calendars.

The case against: cash usage is declining, digital payments dominate, and the $100 bill already serves the narrow segment of high-value cash transactions that persist. "I don't see any practical function that the $250 denomination would fulfill," one critic told reporters, noting the denomination "exceeds what most people would have as a typical daily transaction" [10].

The case for: the $100 bill's purchasing power has declined by roughly 89% since 1969, and the U.S. is an outlier among major economies in not having updated its highest denomination in over half a century. Switzerland circulates a 1,000-franc note (approximately $1,100). Singapore maintained a $10,000 note until 2014. The argument is that a $250 bill would simply catch up to where inflation has already moved [12].

But the strongest version of the case for a higher denomination doesn't lead to $250 — it leads to $500 or higher. The choice of $250, coinciding neatly with America's 250th birthday, suggests the denomination was chosen for symbolic resonance rather than economic optimization.

A Branding Exercise with a Price Tag

The steelman case for skeptics is straightforward: the $250 bill is a political branding exercise wrapped in the language of monetary policy. The denomination matches a commemorative date, not a transactional need. The design features a living president in violation of 160 years of precedent. The legislation has no bipartisan support. The Treasury official who resisted was reassigned. And the bill enters a market where cash itself is in structural decline.

None of this means the proposal is illegal — it requires only an act of Congress, which the Republican majority could deliver. But it does mean the $250 bill's significance is primarily political, not economic. Whether that makes it a legitimate exercise of congressional authority over currency or an inappropriate use of the nation's money supply as a campaign artifact depends, in the end, on where one draws the line between commemoration and self-promotion.

Bessent, for his part, insists the line is clear: "It's all up to Capitol Hill. We will stick to the law" [1]. The law, for now, says no.