Could Ronald Reagan Replace Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 Bill?

Move over, Ulysses S. Grant. A new proposal would bump the 18th president off the $50 bill and replace him with Ronald Reagan.

Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), who introduced legislation in Congress to make the change, points out that the likenesses of two modern presidents -- both Democrats -- are already on U.S. currency: President Franklin Roosevelt is on the dime and President John F. Kennedy is on the half-dollar.

"Every generation needs its own heroes," McHenry said in a press release. "One decade into the 21st century, it's time to honor the last great president of the 20th and give President Reagan a place beside Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy."

In polls of presidential scholars, Reagan consistently outranks Grant, McHenry said.

Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, which will consider the proposal, isn't ready to dump Grant for "someone whose policies are still controversial," The Los Angeles Times reported.

"Our currency ought to be something that unites us," said Sherman, who represents Reagan's adopted home state of California.

Admirers of Grant, who helped lead the Union Army to victory during the Civil War, aren't thrilled with the plan either.

"I'm very upset," Keya Morgan, a New York-based Grant scholar told the Times. "I have all the respect in the world for Reagan, but what he accomplished is not anywhere as important as what Ulysses S. Grant accomplished."

A 2005 move to put Reagan on the $50 bill stalled in the Financial Services Committee. Earlier proposals to replace Roosevelt with Reagan on the dime and to put Reagan on the $20 bill in place of Andrew Jackson also failed.