DOGE targets the Penny

• In an article on X, DOGE criticized the cost of producing the penny.
• The debate over the penny, which costs more to earn than it is worth, goes back decades.
• DOGE alone cannot remove the coin from circulation.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Effectiveness is targeting one of the federal government’s most notorious examples of waste: the penny.

Getting rid of the penny would be an early test of DOGE’s influence: Could it help eliminate an element of government inefficiency that has survived decades of attempted reform?

On Tuesday, the DOGE count on three hundred to make.

Despite bipartisan recognition of the cost of the penny since at least the 1970s, efforts to phase out or modify the coin have been repeatedly blocked in Congress, making it an ideal target for the DOGE efficiency campaign .

Lawmakers were considering these questions as recently as November, when Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who founded the Senate DOGE caucus, said changing the makeup of the room could save significant amounts of money.

Material costs are largely responsible for the high penny cost. While the coins were originally made of pure copper, they have contained nearly 98% zinc since 1982, according to JM Bullion. But zinc is no longer as cheap as it used to be. According to the U.S. Mint’s 2023 report, the unit cost of the penny increased 12.9%, more than any other coin.

Fewer people are using cash these days, according to the Federal Reserve’s 2024 Consumer Payments Report. Although the report does not detail the use of the penny, it reveals that 16% of payments in 2023 were made in cash, up from 18% the previous year.

It’s unclear from one report whether DOGE plans to officially phase out the penny — and Musk’s group alone doesn’t have the power to get rid of the coin. Congress would have to pass a law banning distribution of the coin or, in theory, the Treasury Secretary could decide that the nation no longer needs to make it.

Other countries, including Canada and Sweden, stopped producing their coins, and the United States abandoned its half-cent coin in 1857. Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, found in a 2022 survey that 58% of people agreed that the government should stop producing new money.

When President Donald Trump officially took office on Monday, he signed an executive order making DOGE a “temporary organization” within the government and limiting its scope to updating the federal government’s computer systems. By posting on the penny, DOGE appears to be signaling it plans to provide feedback on more than just software issues.