Donald Trump has made unprecedented moves to take on government waste.
Most of his cuts are facing major pushback from the Left.
But Donald Trump revealed a jaw-dropping new plan that will leave Democrats spinning in circles.
Pinching pennies
With the degree that the dollar has been devalued over the last several decades, it hardly makes any sense to continue to mint pennies.
The value of a penny today is so minuscule that many people won’t even bother to bend down to pick one up they find on the street.
And the cost to produce these nearly worthless coins is almost four times their face value.
In 2024, the U.S. Mint spent 3.7 cents for every penny it produced.
That year saw a 20.2% increase in penny manufacturing costs due to the rising price of copper and zinc.
This is after they have already tried to reduce the cost of producing pennies by using mostly zinc instead of copper.
Some older pennies are made of mostly copper, giving them a scrap value that exceeds their face value, though of course, scrapping them is illegal as they are still considered U.S. currency.
It simply makes no sense to keep putting more of these coins in circulation.
Donald Trump agrees and took to Truth Social to announce an end to penny production.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” The President wrote. “This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”
Trump’s call to end penny production should receive bipartisan support.
In 2013, President Barrack Obama had called to cease penny production, saying, a “good metaphor for some of the larger problems” in government.
Congress has attempted to solve the penny problem unsuccessfully in the past.
In 1989, Congress considered a bill to round all cash transactions to the nearest nickel.
Another bill was introduced in 2017 by Republican Senators John McCain and Mike Enzi that would pause production for 10 years before deciding whether or not to put the coins back into production.
Both of these bills failed to pass.
Where politicians in the past have failed to eliminate this simple waste, hopefully, Trump can succeed.
The issue of getting rid of pennies should be an easy sell to the American people.
It’s another one of those issues – like Daylight Savings Time – which President Trump has also proposed eliminating.
Everyone knows it makes no sense to keep doing it, but the government drags its heels on making a simple fix.
According to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), in 2023, penny production cost American taxpayers $179 million, and producing pennies accounted for 40% of the cost of all coin production.
Lower denomination coins have already been phased out in countries such as Chile, Brazil, China, and Canada.
The old saying goes that a penny saved is a penny earned, but a penny not produced saves over three pennies for the American taxpayer.
