September 13, 1979
Page 24397
SUSIE MAKES A STATEMENT
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the Central Maine Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Maine, recently pointed out the unintended comment on our economy made by the Susan B. Anthony dollar. This week, we are debating the Federal budget for 1980 and the best ways to use that budget in the fight against inflation. I hope the results of that debate do not mirror the symbolism of our new dollar coin.
Mr. President, I request that the following editorial, "Susie Makes a Statement," from the Morning Sentinel of July 12, be printed in the RECORD.
SUSIE MAKES A STATEMENT
Those women's righters (of both sexes) who waged such a strong campaign to get suffragette Susan B. Anthony's likeness on a coin may feel let down by the new metal dollar.
In contrast with the Eisenhower dollar and the Kennedy half dollar, its size is certainly puny. And, although it is worth a dollar as coin of the realm, it contains only about three cents worth of metal.
Could it be, then, that chauvinists in the U.S. Mint have conspired to put down not only Susan B., but her spiritual descendants all across this great land?
We don't want to think so. Rather, we prefer to look at the physical size of the Anthony dollar as symbolic of what has happened to the value of our money since the golden age of Eisenhower and even the more recent times of John F. Kennedy.
If the Anthony dollar is less than half as big as the Eisenhower, isn't that representative of what a dollar will buy these days in the supermarket compared with what it would purchase back in the 1950s?
And if it isn't even as big as the Kennedy half dollar, isn't that rather symbolic of what has happened to us as a nation in the past two decades?
Whatever the intent of our Washington lardheads, they've made a significant statement with the Susie B.'s. They have, indeed!