The Final State of the Union
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Summary:
Approximately 1.4 billion dollar coins are sitting unused in Federal Reserve Bank vaults.
As part of the Obama Administration’s Campaign to Cut Waste, Vice President Biden today announced the U.S. Mint would suspend the production of Presidential dollar coins for circulation. Today, nearly 1.4 billion surplus dollar coins are sitting in Federal Reserve vaults due to lack of demand for the coins.
No longer making $1 coins for circulation will save taxpayers at least $50 million per year in production and storage costs. Rather than producing the 1.6 billion additional dollar coins it was on pace to produce through 2016, the Mint will only make enough coins to sell to the collectors who want them. The existing inventory of coins will be used to meet regular circulating demand, and will be drawn down over time.
Today’s announcement took place at a Cabinet meeting about the President’s commitment to cut waste and eliminate misspent dollars across the Federal Government. At the meeting, Vice President Biden also announced that the Department of Justice had recovered more than $5.6 billion in fraud across the government in 2011, as well as steps the Department of Health and Human Services is taking to prevent Medicare prescription drug fraud.
