PRESIDENT TRUMP WALKS OUT WITH 100-0 SENATE VOTE – SCHUMER CAVES!
Senate Unanimously Backs the Common Cents Act - But the Penny Is Already Gone and the Bill Is Not Yet Law
Congress is moving toward a national framework for cash rounding and a cheaper nickel. The key distinction is that Treasury stopped producing circulating pennies last year, while lawmakers are now trying to codify and manage the transition.
The Senate ended its pre-recess work with a rare piece of unanimous agreement over something Americans still encounter at grocery stores, restaurants and cash registers every day.
On August 7, senators passed S. 1525, the Common Cents Act, by unanimous consent after agreeing to a substitute amendment.
The legislation would formally end production of the penny for general circulation, create a federal framework for rounding cash transactions when exact change cannot be provided and allow Treasury to test a cheaper composition for the five-cent coin.
Those changes have broad bipartisan support.
But there are two important details that can easily get lost in the celebration.
The first is that the United States already stopped producing pennies for general circulation in November 2025.
The second is that the Senate bill is not yet on President Donald Trump's desk.
The House passed its own companion measure, H.R. 3074, by voice vote on July 14. The Senate then passed S. 1525 with matching language on August 7. Because the chambers acted on different bill numbers, one chamber still must pass the same legislative vehicle before it can be enrolled and sent to the president.
That procedural distinction does not diminish how close Congress is to settling a problem Treasury has already been managing in practice.
It does change what the Senate vote actually accomplished.
Congress did not suddenly kill the penny last week.
Treasury had already done that for circulating production.
What Congress is now trying to do is put the phaseout on a clearer statutory footing and establish nationwide rules for the cash economy that has to function without a steady supply of new one-cent coins.
The U.S. Mint struck the final circulating penny on November 12, 2025, ending a 232-year production run for the coin.
The decision came after the cost of producing a penny had risen far above its face value.
Treasury said stopping production was projected to save about $56 million a year in material costs.
The penny did not disappear from the monetary system when production stopped.
Existing one-cent coins remain legal tender and retain their value.
The Mint has cited an estimate of roughly 300 billion pennies in circulation, while Treasury has separately referred to roughly 114 billion existing pennies being recirculated through the financial system. The estimates use different measures, but both make the same practical point: there is still an enormous stock of pennies outside the Mint.
Businesses and banks can continue accepting and depositing them.
The 2026 anniversary penny also needs a distinction.
The Mint is producing a special 1776-2026 penny as a collectible for annual sets and numismatic products.
It is not a new circulating penny intended to replenish store cash drawers.
For America's 250th anniversary, the Mint is putting special designs into circulation on other denominations, including the nickel, dime and quarters. The penny remains a collector product rather than a circulating coin.
That is why cash rounding has become the most immediate practical issue.
Treasury issued nonbinding guidance after penny production ended, but retailers have faced a patchwork of state laws, tax rules and business practices over what to do when exact penny change is unavailable.
The Common Cents Act would create a federal safe harbor for a standardized form of rounding.
Under the Senate-passed text, a person handling a cash transaction may round when exact change cannot be provided.
Totals ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7 cents may be rounded down to the nearest five-cent increment.
Totals ending in 3, 4, 8 or 9 cents may be rounded up.
A cash total of $19.82 could therefore become $19.80, while $19.83 could become $19.85 when exact change is unavailable.
The bill also contains a special rule allowing a $0.01 or $0.02 cash transaction to be rounded up to $0.05.
The word may matters.
The Senate version does not generally force every retailer to round every cash purchase.
It expressly says the law should not be construed to require rounding under its basic transaction rules.
It also gives businesses additional authority to round in the customer's favor even outside the exact-change problem - for example, rounding down when the customer is paying cash.
And if an employer chooses to round a cash payment to an employee, the bill requires the rounding to go upward rather than reduce the employee's pay.
Electronic payments are treated differently.
Credit cards, checks, gift cards, money orders, electronic fund transfers and similar payment methods would remain calculated to the exact cent.
That means the legislation is not a general rule changing product prices from cents to nickels.
It is a rule for the physical-cash problem created by the shrinking supply of pennies.
The federal preemption language is another significant part of the bill.
A business following the federal rounding rules could not be treated as violating a federal, state, tribal or local requirement solely because it used that compliant rounding method.
That provision is designed to reduce the legal uncertainty retailers have faced as states and localities respond differently to the penny phaseout.
The bill does not erase unrelated wage, overtime or paid-leave protections.
Congress is also trying to address the next coin problem before it gets worse.
The nickel is worth five cents.
In fiscal year 2025, the U.S. Mint reported that producing and distributing one nickel cost 13.31 cents.
That was an improvement from 13.78 cents in fiscal year 2024, but it still meant the government spent well over twice the coin's face value to produce it.
Fiscal year 2025 marked the 20th consecutive year in which both the penny and nickel cost more to make than their face values.
The current circulating nickel is an alloy of about 75% copper and 25% nickel.
The Common Cents Act would permit a different construction: an inner layer of zinc and an outer layer of nickel.
Treasury would not be required to switch immediately.
The secretary could prescribe the zinc-and-nickel composition only after testing and evaluation showed that it would reduce production costs and, to the greatest extent practicable, have minimal adverse effects on machines designed to accept coins.
That last condition matters for vending machines, parking meters, change counters and other systems built around the dimensions and electromagnetic properties of today's nickel.
So the bill is not eliminating the nickel.
It is trying to make the nickel cheaper before the penny's disappearance increases demand for five-cent coins.
That is a more cautious approach than simply withdrawing another denomination from circulation.
It also gives Treasury more flexibility over coin composition than it has under the current statutory formula.
The legislation goes further by requiring the Federal Reserve to develop and publicly report a strategy for stabilizing penny distribution during the transition.
Within 90 days of enactment, the Fed would have to outline how it plans to limit disruptions in penny orders and deposits at commercial coin terminals.
Treasury would also have to assess how penny shortages and rounding practices affect low-income communities, older consumers, and people who are unbanked or underbanked.
Follow-up reports would track whether stress is developing in the coin-distribution system.
That is an important safeguard because cash users are not evenly distributed across the population.
A change that is almost invisible to a person who pays by phone or credit card can matter much more to someone who depends heavily on cash.
Supporters describe the legislation as an example of straightforward fiscal housekeeping.
There is a strong argument for that description.
The government stopped making a coin that cost several times its face value, and Congress is now trying to give businesses clearer rules while reducing the cost of the next-lowest denomination.
The Senate's unanimous consent vote also shows that the policy has escaped much of the partisan conflict surrounding larger tax and spending bills.
But the savings should still be kept in perspective.
Treasury's projected penny savings of roughly $56 million annually are real money, but they are small in the context of a federal budget measured in trillions of dollars.
The more immediate benefit may be operational certainty: retailers, banks, consumers and the Federal Reserve have to know how to handle cash as the penny supply becomes less reliable.
That is why the rounding provisions and coin-distribution planning may matter more day to day than the symbolism of formally ending a coin the Mint already stopped producing.
The legislative status is also more complicated than saying the bill has already passed Congress.
The House passed H.R. 3074 by voice vote on July 14.
The Senate passed S. 1525 by unanimous consent on August 7 with substantially matching text.
Because the House and Senate passed separate bill numbers, the same measure still must be cleared by both chambers before it can be presented to the president.
With Congress in its August recess, that final procedural step has not yet happened.
So the Senate vote settled one issue: there is overwhelming bipartisan support for putting the penny phaseout and cash-rounding transition into federal law.
What it did not settle is the bill's enactment date or exactly how quickly Treasury could move to a cheaper nickel after testing.
The penny is already no longer being made for circulation.
The Common Cents Act is about what comes next.
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If Congress finishes the procedural work, the United States would finally have a national rule for managing cash without new pennies - and a statutory path toward making the nickel cost less than the 13.31 cents taxpayers currently spend to produce a five-cent coin.
