Posted on 01/22/2025 12:15:10 PM PST by Olog-hai
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is targeting one of the federal government’s most notorious examples of waste: the penny.
Getting rid of the penny would be an early test of DOGE’s influence: Could it help eliminate a piece of government inefficiency that has survived decades of reform attempts?
On Tuesday, DOGE’s account on X highlighted the coin’s mounting costs: In fiscal year 2023, taxpayers spent more than $179 million producing over 4.5 billion pennies, with each coin costing more than three cents to make.
Despite bipartisan recognition of the penny’s costs since at least the 1970s, efforts to phase out or change the coin have repeatedly stalled in Congress, making it an ideal target for DOGE’s efficiency campaign.
Lawmakers were considering the questions as recently as November, when Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who founded the Senate’s DOGE caucus, said changing the makeup of the coin could save significant money. …
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Keep the penny, bigger fish to fry
The citizenry should be forced to pay for others’ misfortunes. Let people be taken care of by their families. I honestly can’t stand the concept of welfare.
and if an illegal comes in to the emergency room with a gunshot would, put them in cuffs and send them back to mexico
Which means that prices will be rounded to the nearest 5 cents. So instead of $9.96 it will be $10. Automatic inflation. Love it.
Exactly!
In 1967 you could buy a gallon of gas for 25-30 cents.
You still could if our coins were still made of silver.
Actually at the current value of silver, you might get change back from your quarter.
A total re-do of US currency is long overdue. Given how much our currency has inflated over the past four years, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make the dollar the lowest denomination and call 100 dollars something else. Maybe a “Cent” for example.
And I say this with only part of my tongue in my cheek.
Can we at least get rid of the stupid “woke” quarters?
yes of course. Private charity. if a person wants to give another person, something out of the goodness of their heart, I’m all for that. But when you start forcing people to take money from one group and give it to another group that’s sick.
In further study, they were OPA tokens: https://bobstokens.com/the-history-of-opa-tokens/
Hmmm, if everyone who has a penny jar would turn them in the government wouldn’t have to make any more.
Wow 179 million a year?
Talk about aiming for your low hanging fruit
I use Cash. Carry a quarter and a dime, they make good screw drivers. Rest go in the 2 granddaughters piggy banks. One is 6-years, the other nearly 7 months. They get it at 18.
I put the CC in the gun safe the day Senile stole Trump’s chair. New prices would cause over use and CC debt.
Many of us stationed in Europe with the U.S. military coped with no pennies at the U.S. bases. I don’t believe any one had any difficulties with the absence of pennies.
I’ve got six of them.
I think I have that many too, been awhile since I dug them out.
Just make new pennies every 10 years.
Problem's solved.
I keep a quarter for Aldi in my car.
My first time spending money in Canada was in 2007, and I did have Canadian pennies in my change. Fast forward to 2015, when I next visited Canada, and suddenly the penny was no good. They did accept the pennies at a welcome station where I was converting them, along with nickels and dimes, to quarters.
LOL, yup.
I hope not, but they should concentrate on the big things first. Priorities, right?
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