Senators press Treasury on Trump signature added to US paper money

Two senators want to know how a decision to place President Donald Trump’s name on U.S. currency was made and what the move does to address Americans’ economic worries.

In a letter sent April 2 to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, say they want “to better understand how, if at all, the decision to put President Trump’s signature on paper money will in any way benefit the American public as our nation confronts an affordability crisis of President Trump’s own making.”

On March 26, the Treasury Department announced Trump’s name would appear on all future U.S. paper currency, the first time such a gesture has been made for a sitting president.

In a statement accompanying the announcement, Bessent said Trump’s leadership had put the nation “on a path toward unprecedented economic growth … and fiscal strength and stability” and suggested there was “no more powerful way” to recognize the president’s achievements “than U.S. dollar bills bearing his name.”

“In reality,” Warren and Merkley said in their April 2 letter, “Americans are facing an affordability crisis, and America’s economy is on shaky ground.”

Warren requested that Bessent reveal the logistics and costs to taxpayers of adding Trump’s signature to the nation’s paper currency and explain how the move will lower the costs of housing, energy and groceries or slow inflation.

The senators suggested the move might be a ploy intended to distract the public from the “tangible, undeniable economic crises they face on a daily basis.”

Mortgage rates have risen to their highest levels since September, and inflation is projected to top 4% in 2026, they said, trends they claimed are driven “by President Trump’s reckless military actions in the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, oil prices are rising, they said, as are the costs of everyday essentials.

“In other words, life is becoming less, not more, affordable for Americans,” the senators wrote in their letter. “It is deeply unclear how, if at all, the Administration believes that emblazoning U.S. currency with President Trump’s signature will address any of the serious problems facing the American public.”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.