ASSOCIATED PRESS
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 7½ cents.
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.
“If we continue minting coins with the current metal content, with each new penny and nickel we issue, we will also be contributing to our national debt by almost as much as the coin is worth,” said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, who chairs the House panel that oversees the U.S. Mint.
Copper and nickel prices have tripled since 2003 and the price of zinc has quadrupled, said Mr. Gutierrez.
A penny, which consists of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper, cost 1.26 cents to make as of yesterday. And a nickel — 75 percent copper and the rest nickel — cost 7.7 cents, based on current commodity prices, according to the Mint.
That’s down from the end of the 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.
Mr. 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.
A lousy deal, lawmakers concluded as the House moved toward a vote that directs the Treasury secretary to “prescribe” — suggest — a new, more economical composition of the nickel and the penny.
Unsaid in the legislation is the Constitution’s delegation of power to Congress “to coin money (and) regulate the value thereof.”
The Bush administration, like others before, chafes at that.
Mint Director Edmund Moy yesterday told House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, 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.
The bill also gives the public and the metal industry too little time to weigh in on the new coin composition, he said.
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