The U.S. Mint stopped making pennies in 2025, but legislation passed by the Senate and headed to President Donald Trump’s desk will formally end their production after 234 years.
The bill, passed by voice vote late Monday, directs the government to not make pennies, giving a legal stamp of approval to the Trump administration’s decision to stop producing the currency last year. The penny, among the first coins to be made after the Mint was established in 1792, has become increasingly expensive to produce and is used by fewer and fewer consumers as digital transactions have become more standard.
Trump is expected to sign the bill. He wrote in a social media post last year that the U.S. has produced the 1-cent coin for “far too long.”
Ending the penny will save millions of dollars
The Mint says that production of a penny now costs almost 4 cents and that ceasing to make them would generate immediate savings of $56 million annually.
The bipartisan bill, called The Common Cents Act, was sponsored by Reps. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., and Robert Garcia, D-Calif.
“When it comes to taking on waste and making sure our tax dollars are spent wisely, it’s common sense that we should stop making a coin that costs nearly four times more than it’s worth to produce,” Garcia said.
Consumers can still use their pennies
Pennies are still in circulation, and the formal end to their production doesn’t mean consumers or stores can’t use them. The Mint said it made 3.2 billion pennies in 2024.
The bill outlines new procedures for stores as pennies are phased out, and it allows them to round transactions up or down to the nearest 5 cents.
So… instead of addressing any of the 13,726,512 things that are more important than this, Congress wasted a bunch of time to pass a bill to do the thing that Trump already signed an EO for… and had already been carried out… last year.
And the bill is extra useless, because it’s one within the tiny handful of Trump EOs that aren’t going to be torn to shreds by future presidents. 🤷♂️
because discontinuing the penny required congressional approval, and the legislation was needed to direct retailers and other handlers of coin on how they must round transactions: right now, you don’t fucking know what they’re doing.
most still use the penny,
some round properly,
some round all transaction amounts down. walmart self checkout does this by rounding up the change disbursed. change due: 31c? you get 35c back, and it’s noted on the receipt as ‘rounding’. midwest chain kwik trip also rounds this way,
but some choose to take every fucking cent they can and round all transaction amounts up. taco johns, dollar general both were doing this. dg not even noting it on the receipt and going so far as to claim ‘we don’t have any pennies’ (every single time?!?! well that’s not the customer’s fault, give 'em a nickel back then).
Receipt said 10.46 and you billed me $10.50? Sounds like theft to me.
Because they need the precious metals in nickels for AI too…