{"id":66,"date":"2008-05-07T08:20:41","date_gmt":"2008-05-07T15:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/?p=66"},"modified":"2008-05-07T08:20:41","modified_gmt":"2008-05-07T15:20:41","slug":"penny-prices-pinched-by-rising-cost-of-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"Penny prices pinched by rising cost of metal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1943<\/a>
\nFurther evidence that times are tough: It now costs more than a penny to make a penny. And the cost of a nickel is more than 7\u00c2\u00bd cents. That doesn’t make much fiscal “cents”!!!<\/em><\/p>\n

\t \t \t \t \t \t \t \t \t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t \t \t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t \t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t \t\t \t \t \t \t \t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t \t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t \t \t \t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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Prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress proposing steel-made pennies and nickels. Surging prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress trying to bring back the steel-made pennies of World War II and maybe using steel for nickels, as well.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t \t Copper and nickel prices have tripled since 2003 and the price of zinc has quadrupled, said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, whose subcommittee oversees the U.S. Mint.<\/p>\n

Keeping the coin content means “contributing to our national debt by almost as much as the coin is worth,” Gutierrez said.<\/p>\n

\"art.penny.ap.jpg\" A penny, which consists of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper, cost 1.26 cents to make as of Tuesday. And a nickel — 75 percent copper and the rest nickel — cost 7.7 cents, based on current commodity prices, according to the Mint<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t \t \t \t \t \t \t \t \t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t \t \t \t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t \t\t \t \t \t \t \t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t \t \t \t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t \t \t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t \t That’s down from the end of 2007, when even higher metal prices drove the penny’s cost to 1.67 cents, according to the Mint. The cost of making a nickel then was nearly a dime.\u00c2\u00a0 Gutierrez estimated that striking the two coins at costs well above their face value set the Treasury and taxpayers back about $100 million last year alone.<\/p>\n

A lousy deal, lawmakers have concluded. On Tuesday, the House debated a bill that directs the Treasury secretary to suggest a new, more economical composition of the nickel and the penny. A vote was delayed because of Republican procedural moves and is expected later in the week.<\/p>\n

Unsaid in the legislation is the Constitution’s delegation of power to Congress “to coin money [and] regulate the value thereof.”<\/p>\n

The Bush administration, like others before, chafes at that.<\/p>\n

Just a few hours before the House vote, Mint Director Edmund Moy told House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, that the Treasury Department opposes the bill as “too prescriptive” in part because it does not explicitly delegate the power to decide the new coin composition.<\/p>\n

The bill also gives the public and the metal industry too little time to weigh in on the new coin composition, he said.<\/p>\n

“We can’t wholeheartedly support that bill,” Moy said in a telephone interview. Moy said he could not say whether President Bush would veto the House version in the unlikely event it survived the Senate.<\/p>\n

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colorado, who is retiring at the end of the year, is expected to present the Senate with a version more acceptable to the administration in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

The proposals are alternatives to what many consider a more pragmatic, but politically impossible solution to the penny problem: getting rid of the penny altogether.<\/p>\n

“People still want pennies, which is why we’re still making them,” Moy said.<\/p>\n

Even Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged in a radio interview earlier this year that getting rid of the penny made sense but wasn’t politically doable — and certainly nothing he is planning to tackle during the Bush team’s final months in office.<\/p>\n

In 2007, the Mint produced 7.4 billion pennies and 1.2 billion nickels, according to the House Financial Services Committee.<\/p>\n

[via WASHINGTON (AP)]<\/p>\n

Other coins still cost less than their face value, according to the Mint. The dime costs a little over 4 cents to make, while the quarter costs almost 10 cents. The dollar coin, meanwhile, costs about 16 cents to make, according to the Mint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Further evidence that times are tough: It now costs more than a penny to make a penny. And the cost of a nickel is more than 7\u00c2\u00bd cents. That doesn’t make much fiscal “cents”!!! Prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress proposing steel-made pennies and nickels. Surging prices for copper, zinc and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[22,13,3,7,28],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-lincoln","tag-money","tag-news","tag-penny","tag-steel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.capitaltreasures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}