(NewsNation) — Two U.S. senators from opposing sides of the political aisle are pushing together to permanently do away with the U.S. Mint producing the penny, which the legislators argue will help to eliminate wasteful government spending.
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, and Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee introduced the bipartisan legislation Thursday. The bill, the Make Sense Not Cents Act, claims that no longer minting pennies would save the United States an estimated $85 million each year.
Every penny cost $0.0369 to produce in 2024, up 20% from the year before, according to the U.S. Mint’s annual report, which reported that the Mint lost more than $85 million on the nearly 3.2 billion pennies it produced in fiscal year 2024.
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In a statement issued by the Oregon senator, Merkley said that the continuing production of pennies is the opposite of “common cents” in the use of taxpayer dollars. He said that the savings of tens of millions of dollars each year “is something that both Democrats and Republicans support to take seriously.”
Lee, the Republican, agreed.
“Minting pennies costs the American taxpayer millions every year – nearly four times more than the pennies are worth,” Lee said in a statement issued by the two lawmakers. “No private business would produce something at a 4x loss. It’s time to stop wasting Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars making overpriced pennies.”
The two sponsors of the bill said that two-thirds of the pennies produced in the U.S. never recirculate, which means that millions of pennies are lost or buried in couch cushions, never to be used. Also, at a time when more Americans rely on digital means to pay for their purchases, only 16% of transactions involve cash.
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The introduction of the proposed legislation comes months after President Donald Trump directed the U.S. Treasury to stop making new pennies.
“For far too long, the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in February. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”
He added: “Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”
The new proposed bill was introduced a day after another bill was brought to the U.S. House of Representatives that also calls for penny production to be halted. On Wednesday, another bipartisan bill was introduced by Michigan U.S. Rep. Lisa McClain, a Republican, and California Democrat U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia; that bill is dubbed the Common Cents Act.
“I’ve talked for a long time about transitioning away from the cent and the U.S. penny,” Garcia told Spectrum News. “[It] actually costs us more to produce the penny than the actual cent it’s worth.”
McClain told Spectrum News that making eliminating the production of pennies a bipartisan priority is a “no-brainer.”
“This is a great example of where people can work in a bipartisan fashion to actually get something that makes sense done,” McClain told the news outlet. “We should be celebrating this — this is one of the ways that Congress should work.”
NewsNation’s Andrew Dorn contributed to this story
