Dollar Coin Crusade Would Cost Businesses, Taxpayers

The United States federal government faces some daunting economic challenges. From the debt to the deficit to our credit rating to joblessness, we are staring down the barrel of a gun, economically speaking. There are occasional signs that Washington is beginning to get serious about addressing these problems, such as the emergence of Rep. Paul Ryan as the intellectual force behind conservative economic policy. Sadly, there are just as many, probably many more, examples that Washington doesn’t get it.

Place the latest effort to shred the paper dollar and replace it permanently with the dollar coin in the latter category.

As the Hill puts it, “Rep. David Schweikert (Ariz.) and two other House Republicans — including supercommittee co-chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas) — introduced legislation last week aimed at retiring the paper dollar. Schweikert said his bill would save billions of dollars over the next few decades by transitioning to a dollar coin in four years, or as soon as $600 million worth of dollar coins are in circulation.”

Schweikert should be commended for thinking imaginatively about how to save taxpayers money. But in this case he’s being a little too imaginative. Imposing the unpopular dollar coin on an unwilling American public (previous dollar coin mandates have flopped) – and more importantly, small businesses – will actually increase costs on American taxpayers. In fact, it already is.

The current, more reserved mandate has done nothing to spur the use of dollar coins. Instead these coins are handed out as change by the Post Office and DC Metro stations and customers almost immediately give them to their children as trinkets. As the Washington Times pointed out in a recent editorial, “This utterly wasteful program is costing us a billion, and it’s a perfect example of why this country is going bankrupt.”

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