HomeClubs & OrganizationsCOINS Act to Reform US Currency Gains New Support in Congress

COINS Act to Reform US Currency Gains New Support in Congress

Capital Building Dollar Coin Alliance

Would Provide $16 Billion in Budget Savings

 

By Dollar Coin Alliance ……
Three Members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors of the bipartisan Currency Optimization, Innovation, and National Savings (COINS) Act of 2017 (H.R. 2299), an effort that will modernize U.S. currency in order to save American taxpayers at least $16 billion.

Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL12), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL11) and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA50) are the latest House members to co-sponsor the COINS Act, joining bill sponsors Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY22) and Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA1). Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ9), Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC3), Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY20) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ-4) are also in the coalition of members advocating for currency reform.

Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate, with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, leading the legislative effort.

“The COINS Act is a commonsense proposal to save billions of dollars for taxpayers,” said the Dollar Coin Alliance. “We applaud Reps. Bost, Foster and Hunter for joining the growing support for this legislation. Taxpayers deserve fiscal responsibility from Congress and this bill will ensure that their dollars are not wasted simply by how the government makes money.”

The COINS Act will reform U.S. currency by modernizing one dollar currency, reducing the cost of nickel production and calling for the Comptroller General to carry out a study on the production cost of the penny. A recent economic analysis from economists Aaron Klein, former Chief Economist for the Senate Banking Committee and Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and G. William Hoagland, former Staff Director for the Senate Budget Committee, found that the package of currency reforms is estimated to save taxpayers more than $16 billion. Recent polling shows broad support across the aisle for currency modernization, with 70% of voters in favor of replacing the dollar bill with the dollar coin, when they learn the transition could save the government $4.4 billion over the next 30 years, a figure based on an earlier Government Accounting Office (GAO) study and in line with previous public surveys.

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About Dollar Coin Alliance

The Dollar Coin Alliance is a coalition of small businesses, budget watchdogs, transit agencies and labor groups dedicated to saving American taxpayers billions of dollars by transitioning to a dollar coin, and focused on educating taxpayers and policy-makers about the benefits of increasing dollar coin circulation. For more information, or to get involved, please visit www.DollarCoinAlliance.org.

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1 COMMENT

  1. This is great news, but so far every proposal to replace the wasteful dollar bill with a coin somehow ignores the need to also provide a widely-circulating $2 denomination. The vast majority of countries that have replaced their lowest-denomination bill with a coin also have a convenient 2-unit (dollar, euro, pound, etc.) coin to fill the gap between the one and the five. The reasons are simple:

    > First, it costs about the same to make a 2-unit coin as it does to make a single 1-unit coin, so adding that denomination will result in even lower production costs.

    > Second and more important, having both a 1 and a 2 cuts in half the maximum number of higher-value coins needed to make change, short-circuiting opponents’ fears of “pockets full of dollar coins”. Rather than a maximum of four $1 coins, making change in amounts less than $5 would require at most two dollar-denominated coins – two $2, a $1 and a $2, etc. It can and does work – that’s been the scenario everywhere I’ve travelled that uses both denominations.

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