The End Of The Dollar Coin Is Near

I’m a little late to this party, but, because of an overwhelming lack of interest, the White House on December 13 announced the end of the presidential dollar coin program. That should be the end of dollar coins in the United States for a long,long time.

As I said in late September and early October, I have a great deal of personal history with the dollar coin and am very familiar with the coin-vs.-bill cost analyses. In general, the coin is better from a budget perspective because it costs far less for the government to keep a coin than a bill in circulation.

Those savings only materialize, however, if the dollar coin is a substitute for rather than an addition to the bill. If the bill isn’t eliminated or isn’t used by consumers, producing a dollar coin means an additional rather than a lower expense and a larger rather than a smaller deficit. Producing a coin under these circumstances simply means more taxpayer-financed sales for the companies that produce the raw materials and equipment needed to make the coins.

After literally decades of experience with dollar coins, we now know that collectors might like them but consumers don’t use them. We also know that, because it costs retailers more to get them delivered to their stores than bills, businesses are not inclined to carry dollar coins. So you can’t get one and won’t use it if you do.

In other words, none of the conditions that will make a dollar coin a good deal from a budget perspective will exist. As a result, the administration absolutely made the right call.

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About Stan Collender 126 Articles

Affiliation: Qorvis Communications

Stan Collender is a former New Yorker who, after getting a degree from the University of California, Berkeley, moved to Washington to get it out of his system. That was more than 30 years ago.

During most of his career, Collender has worked on the federal budget and congressional budget process, including stints on the staff of the House and Senate Budget Committees; founding the Federal Budget Report, a newsletter that was published for almost two decades; and for the past 11 years writing a weekly column for NationalJournal.com and now RollCall.com.

He is currently a managing director for Qorvis Communications, where he spends most of his time working with and for financial services clients.

Visit: Capital Gains and Games

1 Comment on The End Of The Dollar Coin Is Near

  1. Nope, the government makes a profit from seignioria for every dollar coin, savings will come by elimaniting the dollar bill, think about if you in your 40s and 50s you realize when you were a teenager a can of beans was 25 cents, if we didn’t have a problem with coins that were worth what a dollar is today, then what is the problem, the only problem I see is that the coins feel like a quarter
    and the anthony’s look like a quarter, they are not commonly found in circulation unless you use the post office or transit stations.

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