Should We Ditch The Penny And The Dollar Bill? Sen. John McCain Thinks So

WASHINGTON, DC — Sen. John McCain and Sen. Mike Enzi are pushing legislation that would eliminate the penny and replace the dollar bill with a dollar coin.

Why bother with such changes? According to the senators, their plan could save $16 billion.

“With our country facing $20 trillion in debt, Congress must act to protect the American taxpayer,” said McCain, an Arizona Republican. “By reforming and modernizing America’s outdated currency system, this commonsense bill would bring about billions in savings without raising taxes.”

They also point out that pennies cost more than a penny to produce. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch for daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Should we get rid of the penny? Should we adopt a dollar coin? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

“Change can be hard sometimes, but switching to a dollar coin could save our country $150 million a year,” said Enzi, a Wyoming Republican. “Our country is in a difficult financial position because we didn’t value the cost of the dollars we spent. We can’t afford to keep that up, and these innovative opportunities are a way to save taxpayer money that is really just being wasted with each new dollar we print and penny we mint.”

Their plan would also reduce the cost of producing nickels.

The United States has tried promoting dollar coins before, but they haven't really caught on.

Released first in 2000, the Sacagawea dollar coin, which honored the Native American guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition, was never popular.

"My contention is this is a failure," said then-Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, back in 2002 in an Associated Press article discussing the dollar coin.

As far as the persistence of the penny, critics say that inflation has made the coins so nearly worthless that they have scarce uses anymore. Many of us find they weigh down our pockets long before we have any need to count out the finer fractions of a dollar.

Brian Domitrovic, a contributor to Forbes, defended the penny in 2013 as a useful bulwark against further inflation and money-printing by the Federal Reserve.

"This money, this petty change, actually costs something to make," he wrote. "Which would be precisely why we should insist that the United States keep making it. It can remind the country of how properly to conduct monetary policy. When market signals say you are pushing too hard, stop it. The real economy will respond by getting back to what it does best, which is roaring."

But inflation has on average been far below the Fed's target rate for years now, so it's not clear how relevant these concerns are at this point.

Like the White House Patch Facebook Page.

Follow us on Twitter.

Sign up to comment on the site.

Photo Illustration by Tim Boyle/Getty Images News/Getty Images