While watching TV the other night, I learned that there was a plot in Congress to eliminate the penny. A Congressional bill was introduced bipartisanly by Lisa McClain (R-Michigan) and Robert Garcia (D-California) two upstarts who evilly titled it the Common Cents Act. It calls for the end of minting pennies and requires cash transactions to be rounded up or down to the nearest nickel.
All of this because last year the U.S. Mint said it lost $85.3 million on the over three billion pennies they minted (as it cost over three cents to print each one). Really? $85.3 million? The Navy just lost $60 million when one of their jets fell off a ship. And Senator Rand Paul reports that the Department of the Interior recently provided a $12 million grant for a 30-court pickleball complex in Las Vegas. Our government wastes money left and right and yet no one says that maybe we should be spending more on rails for Navy ships or maybe people ought to just take up jogging for exercise. $85.3 million? Besides, why should government get all the fun. Sure it’s waste but it’s OUR waste. It’s something we can touch, caress, and appreciate. I say those are pennies well spent.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I want the penny. It is the basis of the dollar. One hundred of them make up a dollar. Without the penny what will make up the dollar? One hundred dandelions? One hundred bumblebees? One hundred tarradiddles? A dollar without a base would be no dollar at all.
The penny, or the ‘cent’ as some have decided to call it, is a historical device and was the first coin to be minted and circulated in the new country of the United States. This Fugio cent which came out in 1787 was purportedly designed by Benjamin Franklin and why wouldn’t it be as he designed a stove, bifocal glasses, swimming fins, and the lightning rod.
Later on, in 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt put Abraham Lincoln’s visage on the front of the penny so that we might admire his full and robust beard. No longer did our coinage need be ashamed of facial hair.
The noble penny has served us well. When we needed a coin to decide the outcome of a tied bet it was there, when we needed a quick replacement for a blown electrical fuse it was there. It has not ever complained of its lowly spot in the numismatic lineage and it proudly did its patriotic duty during World War II by allowing itself to be cast in smelly steel.
Let us not forget that the penny is ever so useful when you’re pumping gasoline into your vehicle and you just barely, barely, go over the price you were aiming for. A quick check of your pockets and there is a penny or two in there waiting to make up the difference. Otherwise you’d have to leave the gas station while receiving a hard look from the attendant and feeling the searing shame of a person who’s defrauded Big Oil. Could one really live with that?
This Common Cents Act is bad news. We need to keep our pennies. They are the most overlooked and useful of our coins. They have been with us since the founding of the Republic. They are our very history.
© Clyde James Aragon