The House passed the Common Cents Act without a single dissenting vote, moving to permanently end penny production after 232 years and save taxpayers $56 million a year.
The bipartisan bill, led by House GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan and Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, would block the Treasury Department from minting any new pennies except collector coins. It would also establish a framework for rounding cash transactions to the nearest five cents and allow the U.S. Mint to produce nickels from cheaper materials than those currently used. Fox News Digital reported the unanimous result on Monday.
A unanimous House vote on anything is rare enough to draw attention. In a Congress where routine spending bills and judicial nominations spark weeks of partisan trench warfare, every single member present agreed: the penny costs more than it is worth, and it is time to stop making them.
The math behind the bill is blunt. By 2025, minting a single penny cost the federal government more than three times the coin's one-cent face value. The Treasury Department estimated that halting production would deliver an immediate annual savings of $56 million, money that had been spent, year after year, stamping out coins most Americans drop into jars or leave on the ground.
The Trump administration recognized the waste first. Before November 2025, the administration ordered the Treasury to stop producing pennies. The U.S. Mint complied that month, ending a production run that stretched back 232 years. But an executive order can be reversed by a future president. The Common Cents Act would draft the halt into statute, ensuring no future administration quietly restarts the presses.
That distinction matters. McClain had previously shepherded a bill through both the House and Senate directing the government to stop minting pennies. That earlier measure, however, lacked the cash-rounding language needed to make a penny-free economy workable at the register. The Common Cents Act fills that gap.
Under the bill, cash transactions would round to the nearest five cents, up or down. But the legislation carves out a specific protection for workers: if a cash wage total is not evenly divisible by five cents, the employer must round upward. The worker keeps the extra fraction, not the boss.
Congress also directed the Treasury to study the bill's effects on low-income Americans, older consumers, and people without bank accounts, sometimes called "debanked" individuals who rely on cash for daily transactions. That provision reflects a practical concern: rounding could, in theory, nibble at the margins for people who pay cash for everything. The study requirement forces the government to track whether that worry materializes.
The New York Post confirmed the bill's key provisions, including the rounding framework and the Treasury's monitoring mandate for vulnerable populations.
Existing pennies, meanwhile, remain legal tender. Nobody's pocket change becomes worthless overnight. The bill simply stops the government from manufacturing new ones at a loss.
Congress does not agree on much. Partisan standoffs over spending, immigration, and judicial appointments dominate most legislative calendars. A unanimous vote on a bill with real policy consequences, not just a post-office naming, stands out.
It is not entirely without precedent. The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act with broad bipartisan support to end twice-yearly clock changes, another issue where the practical absurdity of the status quo eventually overwhelmed partisan instincts.
The Common Cents Act follows a similar logic. There is no ideological constituency for spending three cents to make one cent. Fiscal conservatives see waste. Progressives see resources better spent elsewhere. The penny's defenders, mostly nostalgia and zinc-industry lobbyists, could not muster a single "no" vote.
Even the Senate's recent 86-11 vote on Russia sanctions left a handful of dissenters. The penny bill had none.
McClain, as House GOP Conference Chair, holds one of the top leadership posts in the Republican majority. Garcia ranks as the senior Democrat on the Oversight Committee. The pairing gave the bill credibility on both sides of the aisle and insulated it from the usual accusations of partisan overreach.
Their earlier collaboration on the predecessor bill, which cleared both chambers but lacked the rounding mechanism, showed they understood the legislative gap. Rather than declare victory and move on, they came back with a more complete product. The rounding framework and the worker-protection clause addressed the most obvious objections before opponents could organize around them.
That kind of legislative craftsmanship is worth noting in a Congress that more often lurches from stopgap funding bill to stopgap funding bill, barely avoiding shutdowns along the way.
The Common Cents Act still requires President Trump's signature to become law. The administration already ordered the production halt that the bill would codify, which suggests the White House is unlikely to object to putting that decision on firmer legal ground.
If signed, the law would do what executive action alone cannot: make the penny's retirement permanent. A future president could not simply direct the Mint to restart production without an act of Congress reversing the statute.
Several questions remain. The Senate has not publicly scheduled its own vote on this version of the bill. The specific cheaper materials the Mint would use for nickel production have not been disclosed. And the Treasury's study on consumer impact has no public timeline.
But the hardest part, getting every House member to agree on anything, is done.
When Washington manages to stop spending three cents to make one, it is a small reminder that common sense is not entirely extinct on Capitol Hill, just endangered.