Women on paper money? ‘Pretty good idea,’ Obama says

President Obama slammed the House GOP lawsuit and touted the economy in a Kansas City speech Wednesday, but he also weighed in on another issue — putting women on U.S. currency.

In summarizing a sampling of letters sent to the White House, Obama mentioned a note he received last week from a young girl inquiring why there weren’t any women on American paper money.

{mosads}”And then she gave me like a long list of possible women to put on our dollar bills and quarters and stuff, which I thought was a pretty good idea,” Obama said.

A few women have appeared on coins and bills circulated in America.

Women’s suffrage activist Susan B. Anthony was the first woman to appear on a circulating U.S. coin in 1979 under the Carter administration, according to the U.S. Mint.

Sacagawea, Lewis and Clarke’s guide, appeared with her son on the dollar coin starting in 2000 after former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin called for at least one non-living woman to appear on the coin.

Helen Keller, the deaf and blind author and American political activist, was on the reverse side of the Alabama state quarter in 2003, along with her name in braille.

First first lady Martha Washington was the only woman to appear on a currency note, her portrait surfacing on the Dollar Silver Certificate during a decade span in the late 1800s, according to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.