USA Act Introduced Today! (To Replace One Dollar Note With Coin)

They should take out the cent, and bring back the 2 and 3 cent pieces.

The USAA Act (not "USA" Act) was introduced in July 2014, not July 2015, and is pretty much dead in committee, having been co-sponsored by only two other representatives in the House and one in the Senate. It thus shares a similar fate with virtually-identical acts sponsored by the same group of representatives (mostly Arizona and Colorado) such as the COINS Act and the LTMA (both introduced by Kolbe-AZ) over the last few years. Not surprisingly, the former Representative Mr. Kolbe is listed as a DCA co-chairman. The sole recent reference to the USAA Act is in the form of a July 29, 2015 paid press release by the DCA on PRNewswire, which states that the act was introduced "today" (July 29, 2015) which is patently untrue. Previous attempts at eliminating the cent, nickel, and dollar bill have all met with similar failures to gain endorsements from all sides of the political spectrum.

Many of the leading proponents of the "eliminate the cent" drive are corporate interests who stand to make extra money on every purchase of anything everywhere by rounding up to the nearest 5c. An easier and more cost-effective solution would be to simply stop production of new cents, as there is easily enough supply in circulation to last for several decades, and the 1982+ zinc cents have proven remarkably resistant to wear. Also, from a socioeconomic point of view, lower-income earners tend to conduct a substantially larger portion of their day-to-day business in cash and coins as opposed to higher-income earners who conduct much more of their daily business using debit or credit cards. Since this "rounding" would probably not apply to electronic transactions, the removal of the penny and subsequent rounding up of prices would amount to a de facto "poverty tax" that disproportionately affects lower-income earners.

Removal of the dollar bill would require the replacement of the coin accept/reject mechanisms in almost every vending machine built within the last 30+ years, a billions-of-dollars endeavor that would most assuredly not be financed by the government or any legislation. Incidentally, for the last fiscal year, the government lost about $55 million on the production of cents. To put that into perspective, the current federal deficit is around $18.3 trillion. The American citizens have, for the most part, repeatedly refused to accept the passage of a dollar coin in circulation quantities. It is unlikely that this is going to change, legislation or not.

The US steel industry has been a major contributor to these misguided anti-cent/anti-dollar efforts, on the theory that the existing copper-plated zinc cent and the nickel five-cent piece can be easily and efficiently replaced by ... copper-plated steel versions. Ron Paul is a leading proponent of this idea (CMTSA, 2008). Given the copper and manganese brass amounts present in the composition of the Dollar Coin, it is not surprising that the DCA has also been heavily endorsed by copper and brass producers, mining interests, and related metals-industry firms, all of whom stand to benefit tremendously if the zinc cent were to be eliminated from production along with the dollar bill.

If you want to solve a financial problem, instead of picking on pennies and $1 bills, start worrying about the rampant, unchecked inflation that is debasing American currencies at exponentially-increasing rates. There would be no need to eliminate the cent if inflation hadn't made its real purchasing power less than 1/24th of its purchasing power vs. 100 years ago -- in 1915, 1 cent had the inflation-adjusted purchasing power of 23.9 2015 cents.

The fiat-based system used by governments worldwide are designed for inflation. It's here to stay and will never change.




Totally disagree, low-income earners leave pennies on the ground just like everyone else. The buying power of these rounded values is nil, NOBODY would care if transactions were rounded.

Another thread was created this morning...

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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/t...icle/2569189

Related topic from the automated CCF Press account...

https://goccf.com/t/236555

I hope this Act becomes Law.
Lets hope common sense prevails.
It would cost the long suffering U.S. taxpayer $billions less if it does.

Aahz,

You forget, there is still a $2 bill, which, according to most public opinion polls since the mid 1990s, when they first considered replacing the $1 bill with a "golden colored" coin (I believe they redesigned and reissued the $2 bill as a Federal Reserve note in 1976, first as a measure to try to cut back on printing less $1 bills, and save money, then, they felt it would be easier to replace the $1 bill with the Carter Quarter/SBA Dollar coin with the help of the $2 bill, after the "less $1 bills" idea failed)

Anyway, every public opinion poll since around 1995 suggested that IF the $1 bill goes, the American public will turn to the $2 bill as their "paper alternative" however, this would make it seem like replacing the $1 bill with the $1 coin was pointless though, as the new $2 bills would wear out just as fast as the current $1 bills do and they'd have to print just about as many $2 bills as they did $1 bills, due to the demand for $2 bills the $1 coin will create, so, there goes the government's tax payer dollars and savings from switching to the $1 coin. Am I the only one predicting a $2 COIN if this happens? A U.S. $2 coin would make just as much sense as a U.S. $1 coin. (And even a U.S. $5 coin would make a lot of sense, as I have read that, the $5 bill actually wears out faster than $1 bills do, or so a certain government website claimed)