Congress is advancing reforms to stop minting pennies and cut the cost of nickels that lose taxpayers money on every coin, a common-sense fix Republicans say is long overdue.
The Senate has passed the bipartisan Common Cents Act with unanimous consent, formally ending U.S. penny production after more than two centuries and giving the Treasury a path to make cheaper nickels. The House had already passed the measure, and the bill is now headed to President Trump’s desk.
At the center of the push is a basic arithmetic problem. Pennies cost three times more to make than they are worth. Nickels are even worse on a per-coin basis: it costs about 13 cents to produce a five-cent piece, a taxpayer loss of roughly eight cents on every coin that leaves the mint.
House GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain is pressing the case for fixing the nickel before the losses keep stacking up. Her legislation authorizes a lower-cost nickel mix if testing shows it will cut production costs without significantly disrupting coin-operated machines.
"If it costs 13 cents to make a five-cent coin, Washington should fix the problem instead of wasting more taxpayer money,"
McClain told reporters. She framed the bill as a narrow, practical reform rather than a gimmick.
"My bill gives Treasury a path to make nickels at a lower cost without disrupting how Americans use them. It is a simple reform that saves money and brings a little more common sense to government."
Federal minting of pennies already stopped in November. The Common Cents Act would lock that decision into law after 234 years of penny production and keep existing pennies as legal tender while directing the Federal Reserve to limit supply disruptions.
Just the News reported that the Senate’s unanimous vote also grants the Treasury authority to develop a cheaper nickel recipe. Nickels cost 13.31 cents each to produce in fiscal year 2025, under the current mix of 25% nickel and 75% copper.
The bill also tackles the day-to-day mess left when pennies disappear from cash drawers. The Washington Examiner reported that the measure would create a national standard for rounding cash transactions to the nearest five cents when exact change is unavailable, allowing businesses to round final cash totals up or down to the nearest nickel.
That rounding rule is meant to keep checkout lines moving once new pennies are no longer flowing from the mint. Card payments already dominate many purchases. Coins still matter for cash customers, laundromats, parking meters, and small retailers that cannot float endless losses on metal the government itself produces at a deficit.
Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis tied the coin debate to changing habits. Fewer people reach for loose change when phones, cards, and digital options handle everyday buys.
"More and more Americans are paying with credit cards, debit cards and stablecoins for everyday purchases that once would have been made with cash or coins."
She pointed to history as the guide, not nostalgia.
"The half-cent coin was retired when it was no longer needed, and the penny has now reached that same point. It’s my hope that we can find a cheaper way to produce the nickel so that it remains economically viable for years to come,"
Lummis said.
President Trump had already signaled impatience with the penny. In a social media post last year, he wrote that the United States had produced the one-cent piece for “far too long.” The Common Cents Act now puts a formal end to that production on his desk, along with authority to test whether the nickel can be made without the built-in loss.
The nickel problem is not abstract. A coin that costs 13 cents to make and spends as five cents is a slow leak in the public accounts. Multiply that by the volume the mint has been turning out, and “tradition” becomes a line item.
McClain’s approach does not order an instant scrap of the nickel. It tells Treasury to prove a cheaper composition can work, including for the machines that still take hard money. If testing holds up, the metal mix can change. If it does not, the status quo remains, and so does the loss.
That is the opposite of the usual Washington habit of defending a program because it has always existed. The half-cent went away when it stopped making sense. The penny has now hit the same wall. Lawmakers are asking whether the nickel should keep draining eight cents a coin while payment habits move on.
Supporters cast the package as housekeeping: end a money-losing one-cent piece, set clear rounding rules for cash, and give Treasury room to cut nickel costs without breaking the hardware Americans still use. Critics of big government rarely get a cleaner test case than a coin that costs more than twice its face value to strike.
When it costs more to mint money than the money is worth, the responsible move is to change the recipe, not to keep printing losses and calling it tradition.
