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'Hamilton' Could Ruin Plans to Get a Woman on the $10 Bill

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was really into the idea of putting a woman on money, but then he saw Lin Miranda-Manuel's musical.
Photo via Flickr user Stephen Little

Read: The US Treasury Is Finally Going to Put a Woman's Face on Paper Currency

Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical about Alexander Hamilton may have sparked the Founding Father's reintroduction into the American consciousness, but it could also be the reason a woman's face won't be appearing on US currency anytime soon, TIME reports.

After all the hullabaloo raised over replacing Andrew Jackson—a confusing choice from the beginning—with a woman on the $20 bill, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew agreed to slap a woman's face over Alexander Hamilton's on the $10, instead.

But that was all before Lew became a raving fan of the impossible-to-get-into Broadway musical, Hamilton. Lew gave Lin-Manuel Miranda a tour of the Treasury in March and told New York Magazine how ingenious he thinks the musical is. Apparently he's not alone, as Lew has been getting a ton of complaints about dropping Hamilton from the bill.

In an effort to compromise, Lew suggested keeping Hamilton on the front of the bill and placing a lady who was a "champion of democracy" somewhere on the back. It's a move that Barbara Ortiz Howard, founder of the nonprofit group Women on 20s, compared to making women take a backseat on the bus.

Lew holds the tough decision of whether Hamilton stays, goes, or shares his home on the bill, and is expected to announce the new design any day now. But after telling Miranda the Hamilton cast will be super stoked about the new bill, it's not looking like the first secretary of the treasury will be going anywhere.