A penny for your thoughts..................
Posted on 05/08/2008 8:42:43 AM PDT by Red Badger
WASHINGTON (AP) — Further evidence that times are tough: It now costs more than a penny to make a penny. And the cost of a nickel is more than 7 1/2 cents.
Surging prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress trying to bring back the steel-made pennies of World War II, and maybe using steel for nickels, as well.
Copper and nickel prices have tripled since 2003 and the price of zinc has quadrupled, said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., whose subcommittee oversees the U.S. Mint.
Keeping the coin content means "contributing to our national debt by almost as much as the coin is worth," Gutierrez said.
A penny, which consists of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper, cost 1.26 cents to make as of Tuesday. And a nickel — 75 percent copper and the rest nickel — cost 7.7 cents, based on current commodity prices, according to the Mint.
That's down from the end of the 2007, when even higher metal prices drove the penny's cost to 1.67 cents, according to the Mint. The cost of making a nickel then was nearly a dime.
Gutierrez estimated that striking the two coins at costs well above their face value set the Treasury and taxpayers back about $100 million last year alone.
A lousy deal, lawmakers have concluded. On Tuesday, the House debated a bill that directs the Treasury secretary to "prescribe" — suggest — a new, more economical composition of the nickel and the penny. A vote was delayed because of Republican procedural moves and is expected later in the week.
Unsaid in the legislation is the Constitution's delegation of power to Congress "to coin money (and) regulate the value thereof."
The Bush administration, like others before, chafes at that.
Just a few hours before the House vote, Mint Director Edmund Moy told House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., that the Treasury Department opposes the bill as "too prescriptive" in part because it does not explicitly delegate the power to decide the new coin composition.
The bill also gives the public and the metal industry too little time to weigh in on the new coin composition, he said.
"We can't wholeheartedly support that bill," Moy said in a telephone interview. Moy said he could not say whether President Bush would veto the House version in the unlikely event that it survived the Senate.
Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., who is retiring at the end of the year, is expected to present the Senate with a version more acceptable to the administration in the next few weeks.
The proposals are alternatives to what many consider a more pragmatic, but politically impossible solution to the penny problem: getting rid of the penny altogether.
"People still want pennies, which is why we're still making them," Moy said.
Even Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged in a radio interview earlier this year that getting rid of the penny made sense but wasn't politically doable — and certainly nothing he is planning to tackle during the Bush team's final months in office.
In 2007, the Mint produced 7.4 billion pennies and 1.2 billion nickels, according to the House Financial Services Committee.
Other coins still cost less than their face value, according to the Mint. The dime costs a little over 4 cents to make, while the quarter costs almost 10 cents. The dollar coin, meanwhile, costs about 16 cents to make, according to the Mint.
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The House bill is H.R. 5512.
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U.S. Mint: http://www.usmint.gov
House Committee on Financial Services: http://financialservices.house.gov
A penny for your thoughts..................
It’s quite stupid, the penny and possibly the nickel should be ditched anyway.
They should do away with the penny and create a new 50 cent piece with Abe's likeness on it.
better to discontinue these coins than force the redesign of every coin changer in the country.
Round all US prices to the nearest dime and be done with them..........
Return to better metals for the coins. Save bucks by not paying congress and the senate and removing their retirement. All of them are making more $$ from graft and corruption then from their salaries anyway. These are despicable people who deserve prison terms following their retirement.
They should do away with the penny and create a new 50 cent piece with REAGAN’s likeness on it!!!!!...............
Round them up, I'm sure...Sounds no better than when a DIM raises the sales tax .01 and they argue "It's only one penny!"
Carolyn
Remember, since the courts have decided that anyone qualifies for public office, including the insane, the pathologically criminal, the stupid and the feebleminded (check out Congress), the odds of expecting thoughtful rational and beneficial decisions is pretty much a fond memory.
I say ditch the penny but make the nickels out of wood.
As long as they still make them so they fit in my fuse box, I’m cool with it.
I am glad to see that Congress is guarding the ramparts. There are 13 to 26 illegal aliens, from only God knows where in the US, and Congress is sweating how the US Mint manufactures pennies and nickels. May the Lord watch over us and protect us since Congress is OTL.
I guess he had the MidASS touch.........
Worst economy since 1943!
I can hear the tree-huggers now, "Don't take ANY wooden nickels!"..................
US Constitution Article 1 section 8
“no state shall make anything but Gold and Silver COIN a LEGAL TENDER in payment of debt”
I guess the reading and comprehension skills of the Law Givers is nonexistent. They all should be tried for treason, and upon conviction be executed.
Eyeamok
Gold-fingaaaaa !
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