House Passes Common Cents Act to Eliminate Penny Production and Require Cash Rounding

Sponsored by Rep. McClain, Lisa C. [R-MI-9] · 1 cosponsor

Plain-English Summary

Common Cents Act This bill generally ends the production of the penny and requires rounding to the nearest amount divisible by five for the payment or transfer of cash. The Department of the Treasury must stop producing the penny, except to meet collector needs. The penny shall continue to be legal tender. Any person selling goods or services in a cash transaction, entering into other transfers of cash, or paying cash wages to an employee must round the payment up or down in accordance with the bill. The bill takes effect one year after the date of enactment.

Current Status

Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

What Problem This Addresses

Analysis: The bill appears premised on the argument that the penny costs more to produce than its face value, creates inefficiencies in cash transactions, and imposes burdens on businesses, consumers, and the Mint that outweigh the coin's practical utility. This characterization reflects the bill's stated purpose and common policy rationale for penny-elimination proposals; it is not independently verified fact.

Outlook

As of July 15, 2026, HR 3074 has passed the House by voice vote under suspension of the rules and has been referred to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. The bill's legislative trajectory to this point is notable: it cleared the House Financial Services Committee by a strong 35–13 bipartisan margin and advanced through the full House without a recorded dissenting vote. However, Senate committee referral is an early stage, and no Senate floor action has been recorded. Analysis and prediction, not certainty: the bill's bipartisan House support and noncontroversial procedural path (suspension of the rules, voice vote) suggest a degree of consensus, but Senate scheduling and floor time remain significant uncertainties. Whether the Senate Banking Committee will take up the bill, and on what timeline, cannot be determined from available data.

Arguments From Supporters

Supporters would likely argue that the U.S. Mint has for years spent more than one cent to produce each penny, making continued production a net fiscal loss to the government. They would contend that rounding to the nearest five cents is a widely used practice internationally and imposes minimal real cost on consumers over time, since rounding favors neither buyer nor seller systematically across many transactions. Supporters would also argue that eliminating the penny reduces costs for businesses that handle and sort coins, speeds cash transactions, and reduces an administrative burden on the Federal Reserve and banking system. The bill's allowance for pennies to remain legal tender and for continued production to meet collector demand addresses concerns about disruption to existing penny holders.

Arguments From Opponents

Based on the available action history, no organized floor opposition is evident; the bill passed the House by voice vote without a recorded dissent, and the committee vote, while not unanimous at 35–13, reflected a substantial majority. Potential arguments that have historically been raised against penny-elimination proposals include concerns that rounding could systematically disadvantage lower-income consumers who rely more heavily on cash transactions and for whom rounding losses could accumulate meaningfully. Some opponents have argued that the penny supports price integrity and that retailers might adjust prices upward to benefit from rounding. Concerns about the impact on penny-dependent charitable collection models and on businesses that use penny-precise pricing have also been raised in prior debates. These represent historically documented arguments, not confirmed positions of specific opponents of this bill.

Where Both Sides Agree

Both supporters and likely skeptics would generally agree that the penny's production cost exceeds its face value, a fact documented in prior U.S. Mint annual reports. There is also likely broad agreement that the bill's legal tender preservation and collector exemption provisions address the most disruptive scenarios of penny elimination, and that the one-year implementation period provides reasonable transition time for businesses and the public.

Core Disagreement

The core area of disagreement centers on whether cash-transaction rounding is equitable across income levels and whether it would, in practice, be implemented neutrally by retailers or exploited to extract small but systematic gains from consumers. A secondary disagreement involves whether the macroeconomic and fiscal savings from ending penny production are large enough to justify the transition costs and behavioral adjustments required of businesses, banks, and consumers.

Constitutional Basis Cited

The sponsor cited Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution as the authority for this legislation. That clause grants Congress the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof. This is the standard constitutional basis cited for federal currency and coinage legislation. No constitutional challenge to this authority basis is noted in the available record; this summary does not assert a legal conclusion about the bill's constitutional validity.

Economic Considerations

No Congressional Budget Office score is cited in the available data, and any economic figures here represent analysis, not established fact. Historically, the U.S. Mint has reported that penny production costs have exceeded one cent per coin in recent years, suggesting ongoing net production losses to the federal government that elimination could reduce. The fiscal savings would depend on production volumes at the time of enactment. For consumers and businesses, the net economic effect of five-cent rounding is theoretically near-zero in aggregate over many transactions, though distributional effects on cash-reliant populations are a legitimate analytical concern that has not been quantified here. Transition costs for businesses updating point-of-sale systems and procedures are plausible but unquantified. These are analytical observations, not verified projections.

Sections beyond the plain-English summary are AI-synthesized analysis based on the sourced legislative record from Congress.gov, not independently verified fact.