Making cents doesn't make sense.

And it hasn't for some time now. The process of making a single penny is well beyond that of a penny. Even the metal used in a penny is worth more than the actual penny. When the material your currency is made of is worth more than the actual currency, you have inflation problems.

Surging prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress trying to bring back the steel-made pennies of World War II and maybe using steel for nickels, as well.

Copper and nickel prices have tripled since 2003 and the price of zinc has quadrupled, said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, whose subcommittee oversees the U.S. Mint.

A penny, which consists of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper, cost 1.26 cents to make as of Tuesday. And a nickel -- 75 percent copper and the rest nickel -- cost 7.7 cents, based on current commodity prices, according to the Mint.

That's down from the end of 2007, when even higher metal prices drove the penny's cost to 1.67 cents, according to the Mint. The cost of making a nickel then was nearly a dime.

So, why not just get rid of the penny? Unless we are going to to try and freeze inflation (which is currently impossible with oil dictating the value of the dollar), the value of the penny becomes less and less. It's like the Italian Lira. Remember that shit? Where a single US dollar equaled to several thousand Lira. Just fuck the penny and round out to the nickel. Of course, congress won't do that because they're a bunch of fucking fat, inactive idiots who prefer to wring their hands than actually do anything worthwhile.

Just a few hours before the House vote, Mint Director Edmund Moy told House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, that the Treasury Department opposes the bill as "too prescriptive" in part because it does not explicitly delegate the power to decide the new coin composition.

"We can't wholeheartedly support that bill," Moy said in a telephone interview. Moy said he could not say whether President Bush would veto the House version in the unlikely event it survived the Senate.

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colorado, who is retiring at the end of the year, is expected to present the Senate with a version more acceptable to the administration in the next few weeks.

The proposals are alternatives to what many consider a more pragmatic, but politically impossible solution to the penny problem: getting rid of the penny altogether.

"People still want pennies, which is why we're still making them," Moy said.

Do they really? Does anyone really give a shit about a penny? The only reason anyone cares at all is because it is worth at least something. If congress were to phase out the penny, I wouldn't blink an eye.

Even Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged in a radio interview earlier this year that getting rid of the penny made sense but wasn't politically doable -- and certainly nothing he is planning to tackle during the Bush team's final months in office.

In 2007, the Mint produced 7.4 billion pennies and 1.2 billion nickels, according to the House Financial Services Committee.

Other coins still cost less than their face value, according to the Mint. The dime costs a little over 4 cents to make, while the quarter costs almost 10 cents. The dollar coin, meanwhile, costs about 16 cents to make, according to the Mint.
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