Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the power dynamics, personnel decisions and policy deliberations of Donald Trump’s White House. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Sophia | Email Irie | Email Ben President DONALD TRUMP is known for carrying around a wad of hundred-dollar bills, tipping in Franklins as he goes, but he’s now focused on pinching pennies. “Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s one penny at a time,” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday night, announcing that he’s instructing the Department of the Treasury to halt the minting of new pennies. The idea is not exactly novel. But if successful, it would mark the end of the U.S. Mint’s annual production of over three billion pennies, eventually putting the coin out of circulation. Trump’s reasoning? The penny is a money-loser. Each 1-cent penny costs 3.69 cents to produce and distribute, according to the U.S. Mint. Compared to Trump’s blitz of government agencies, the elimination of the penny is a measure that is relatively widely supported, even if it would only save the federal government an estimated $85 million each year. Plenty of Republicans and Democrats have supported the idea of nixing the lowly 1-cent coin displaying former President ABRAHAM LINCOLN’s chiseled face. Former President BARACK OBAMA expressed his support for the move in 2013, calling the penny “a good metaphor for some of the larger problems” of the U.S. government. In 2017, the late Republican Sen. JOHN McCAIN co-sponsored a bill that would have paused penny production for 10 years. More recently, Sen. ANGUS KING, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, has supported the idea, and Democratic Gov. JARED POLIS of Colorado has pushed for ditching the penny as well. But it’s unclear whether Trump has the unilateral authority to halt production without an act of Congress, which dictates currency specifications including the size and metal content of coins. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment about whether it would stop producing pennies. “This has been a long time coming. It’s a little sad that it took this long for us to decide to get rid of the penny,” said ROBERT WHAPLES, an economics professor at Wake Forest University who studied data from 200,000 transactions from a multi-state convenience store to determine the potential impact on cash transactions in a penny-free world. His conclusion? Eliminating the penny would have no impact on inflation. “This shouldn't be inflationary at all. There will be as much rounding up as rounding down,” Whaples said, because the last digit on cash register totals is almost completely random. Of course, for the growing number of Americans paying digitally, rounding won’t matter at all. Trump’s decision, if carried out, could also eliminate the daily time drain of rummaging through cash registers — or your crusty pockets — for the right number of pennies. While proponents of penny-nixxing celebrate the move, the penny lobby — there is a lobby group for everything! — is predictably opposed. “It’s a horrible idea. Eliminating the penny wouldn’t save money. It would actually increase government losses and cost more,” MARK WELLER, executive director of Americans for Common Cents, said in an interview. Americans for Common Cents is a pro-penny advocacy group primarily backed by Artazn, the company supplying the Mint with zinc penny blanks. Weller argues that the nickel costs even more to make than the penny — nearly 14 cents per coin. Without pennies in circulation, the demand for nickels would increase, he said, potentially doubling the Mint’s financial losses. “Cash remains a crucial tool for underserved and underbanked communities,” Weller said. “So for the Trump constituency, this is sending an awful message.” MESSAGE US — Are you ABRAHAM LINCOLN? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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