14 years is an impressive amount of red tape. There are kids today who have yet to enter school and will be high school graduates before this change makes it through committee.

At some point you have to wonder how much of a service the ACD committee is providing vs. how much they're justifying their paychecks.

I doubt it's just red tape. More likely there is invested capital that has to be EOL, and they wrap up all the changes across the stack in one place. Counterfeiting is sexy, so it's the excuse. But really it's a calculation based on depreciation and lifecycle management.

Seems like a bit of a losing game to try to fight counterfeiters on a 15+ year cycle. Who knows what home printing technology will look like in 10 years? Even 5 years from now is hazy. It's already the case that home laser printers can make some very convincing forgeries if you can track down a reasonably similar type of paper and defeat the currency detection firmware.

According the actual Treasury site: "We anticipate the new redesigned $10 note to enter circulation after 2020."

Seriously, how does it take 14 years to verify a design and protect it against counterfeit? SpaceX sent vehicles into space and landed them back here on earth on a moving drone platform in the middle of the Atlantic in less time.

10 years of it could just be resting on laurels. If the current design resists counterfeiting well enough, there's not much justification for making a new one yet.

I'm not saying that's the explanation, just speculating.

Do you want to pay more taxes to upgrade something utilitarian for purely aesthetic reasons?

Or you know, the 12 years from Sputnik to Apollo 11...

You have to think about all the advances that will be made in counterfeit methodologies and technologies in the next 14 years and think that whatever they approve will be outdated in 14 years.