Trump announces hes instructing Treasury Department to stop producing the penny: This is so wasteful!

President Trump is ready to pinch the penny out of production.The 47th president announced Sunday night he was instructing the Department of Treasury to stop making new pennies because the cost of minting the one-cent coin is too high.“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” he posted on Truth Social after attending the first half of Super Bowl LIX.“This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”Trump’s latest maneuver comes as his new administration, with the help of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, is looking to root out high costs throughout the federal government.Last month, Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency said it cost the US more than three cents to manufacture a single penny.

“The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost U.S.taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023.

The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced,” DOGE tweeted.The penny, which is made up of zinc with a copper overlay, cost 3.07 cents to make in 2024, per the US Mint.A 2022 poll showed 58% of US voters wanted the government to stop production of the penny and officials have taken previous steps to achieve that over the last few decades.Former Rep.Jim Kolbe (R-Arizona) introduced a law in 1990 that would have eliminated pennies from all transactions, instead rounding them to the nearest nickel, but that failed.The late Sen.

John McCain (R-Arizona) also attempted to pass a measure that would have stopped the minting of the penny for a decade to study if it was possible to take it out of circulation, but the bill never went forward. ...