Why Can't Money Be Made Out of Something from My State?

1.4 cents. That's what it costs the government to produce each penny - 40% more than the coin's face value. This fact is boosting Congressman Jim Kolbe's (R-AZ) campaign to eliminate the coin, and he plans on introducing legislation this summer to do it. I certainly wouldn't miss the penny, although I do enjoy playing the penny slots and getting free drinks out of it. I guess I could join the high rollers club and move up a nickel. But, what I really could do without is big business feasting at the federal trough.

Principal defenders of the penny in Congress are another pair of retiring Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Rep. Bill Jenkins , who represent significant zinc mining interests in northeastern Tennessee, where the "“blanks" for every penny are produced. (Though conventional wisdom is that a penny is made of copper, it's actually 97.5 percent zinc.) And critics of Kolbe's crusade say he's doing it mainly to help out copper miners, who get more of the metal from Arizona than anywhere else in the country - and have donated $38,500 to his past four campaigns. The metal composition of the nickel - the coin that would rush into the numismatic void created by the penny's demise - is now 75 percent copper.

Via CQ Weekly (subscription required).