Michael Steel, spokesperson of House Speaker John Boehner, dismissed the concept by comparing it to a Simpsons episode called "The Trouble with Trillions", which aired 13 years before the United States debt-ceiling crisis, in which Homer Simpson is on a mission in search of a missing trillion dollar bill [REF].
On January 12, 2013, the Treasury and Federal Reserve announced they would not mint a platinum coin, and five days later, Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) announced that Senate Republicans would end their threat to block an increase in the debt ceiling [REF].