Stop making cents: US Mint moves forward with plans to kill the penny

WASHINGTON AP The Trump administration says making cents doesn t make sense anymore The U S Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and plans to stop producing the coin when those run out a Treasury Department official proven Thursday This move comes as the cost of making pennies has increased markedly by upward of in according to the Treasury By stopping the penny s production the Treasury expects an immediate annual savings of million in reduced material costs according to the official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the news In February President Donald Trump released that he had ordered his administration to cease production of the -cent coin For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than cents This is so wasteful Trump wrote at that time in a post on his Truth Social site I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies There are about billion pennies at this time in circulation in the United States that s billion but they are greatly underutilized the Treasury says The penny was one of the first coins made by the U S Mint after its establishment in The nation s treasury secretary has the authority to mint and issue coins in amounts the secretary decides are necessary to meet the necessities of the United States Advocates for ditching the penny cite its high production cost almost cents per penny now according to the U S Mint and limited utility Fans of the penny cite its usefulness in charity drives and relative bargain in production costs compared with the nickel which costs almost cents to mint The Wall Street Journal first disclosed the news Pennies are the greater part popular coin made by the U S Mint which released making billion of them last year That s more than half of all the new coins it made last year Congress which dictates currency specifications such as the size and metal content of coins could make Trump s order permanent through law But past congressional efforts to ditch the penny have failed Two bipartisan bills to kill the penny permanently were introduced this year Sens Mike Lee R-Utah and Jeff Merkley D-Ore introduced the Make Sense Not Cents Act this month In April Reps Lisa McClain R-Mich and Robert Garcia D-Calif along with Sens Cynthia Lummis R-Wyo and Kirsten Gillibrand D-N Y introduced the Common Cents Act Jay Zagorsky professor of markets constituents procedures and law at Boston University disclosed that while he supports the move to end penny production Congress must include language in any proposed bill to require rounding up in pricing which will eliminate the demand for pennies Zagorsky who lately published a book called The Power of Cash Why Using Paper Money is Good for You and Society commented otherwise only ditching the penny will only increase demand for nickels which are even more expensive at cents to produce If we suddenly have to produce a lot of nickels and we lose more money on producing every nickel eliminating the penny doesn t make any sense Mark Weller executive director of the Americans for Common Cents group which conducts research and provides information to Congress and the Executive Branch on the value and benefits of the penny says there has been an evolution over the past six months that inevitably the production of the penny will be halted His group advocates for the U S to find tactics to reduce the cost of producing the nickel especially since it will be more in demand once the penny is totally eliminated from circulation It s incumbent on Treasury to come up with a cheaper way to make the nickel Weller explained Let s make sure we re making our coins as least expensively as workable and maintaining the option to use cash in transactions