E ven Americans who barely follow politics have gleaned the evils of influence-peddling. People who can’t find the MiddleEast on a map recognize “Halliburton” as leftist shorthand for cronyism and corruption. Both Barack Obama and John McCain spit out the word “lobbyist” as if it were spelled with four letters.
But what most people don’t realize is that a handful of rabble-rousers equipped with a lawyer and a cause also can force outcomes that benefit very few at tremendous expense to the majority.
A case in point is the lawsuit brought by the American Council of the Blind — a small group originally formed by critics of more mainstream organizations — demanding that the United States revamp its currency so the visually impaired can more easily distinguish notes of different value.
The larger and more representative National Federation of the Blind considers ACB’s lawsuit little more than a publicity stunt. “Because the management of paper currency is well within the capacity of the blind, changing the currency to gain a minor convenience is not justified,” said Federation President Marc Maurer. Moreover, the changes to money that have been proposed are largely unworkable. Printing Braille on paper bills has been tested, Maurer said; it wears off very rapidly. Having currency of varying sizes would be helpful only if a blind person carried notes of every denomination to make comparisons among all of them.
Besides, Maurer said, most blind people already have a system for keeping track of paper currency: They fold different denominations different ways or keep bills of different values in separate sections of their wallet or purse. Some create tactile distinctions on their money or separate it by tabs. The need for a change in paper currency “is not of sufficient importance to warrant our attention.”
Alas, reasoned debate is no match for judicial activism. ACB’s claim that the Treasury Department discriminates against Americans with poor vision was accepted by a federal judge in 2006 and upheld 2-to-1 last month by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “Essentially, the United States Treasury has been ordered by the courts to come up with a solution for a nonexistent problem,” Maurer said.
To remedy this nonexistent problem would cost taxpayers and consumers billions of dollars. In addition to the estimated $225 million expense of printing new money, there is the cost of retooling every vending machine in the country that accepts paper currency, an expense estimated at an additional $3.5 billion.
And what good would it do? The older bills will remain in circulation. Revamping the currency will mean only that blind people have more bills to try to distinguish from one another.
Evenif changing the size or shape of currency were an advantage to blind people, the cost to the majority ought to be weighed against the small number of people who would reap such a minor benefit. Of 300 million Americans, only about 900,000 are legally blind, and many of them are elderly people who are generally accompanied by a sighted person. The cost of changing the currency, compared to the benefits produced, is not remotely justifiable.
The Treasury Department can appeal, but there is a simpler solution. Since the basis of the lawsuit is that the Treasury Department violates a section of the Rehabilitation Act guaranteeing the disabled “meaningful access,” Congress should simply amend that law, making an exemption for currency. This would be much fairer to the majority of Americans — and the majority of blind people — for whom revamping the entire paper currency represents an unnecessary expense.
When leading advocates for the blind say the change is not necessary and ably demonstrate that blind individuals successfully handle money in its present form, a handful of dissenters and three activist judges should not be allowed to wreak havoc on the U.S. currency. It serves the general good when justice is blind. In this case, it’s merely benighted.
