The Senate this month approved the Common Cents Act by unanimous consent, a rare moment of agreement on a narrow but long-delayed coinage problem. The bill would write into law the end of circulating penny production, set a nationwide rule for rounding cash totals when pennies are scarce, and give the Treasury Department authority to test a cheaper nickel. The House passed its own version earlier; because the Senate text differs slightly, the House still has to approve the Senate measure before it can go to the president.
The practical work of killing the penny is already done. After President Trump directed the Treasury in early 2025 to stop minting one-cent coins, the U.S. Mint struck its last circulating pennies in Philadelphia in November 2025. Collectible cents marking the nation’s 250th anniversary have still been issued. Existing pennies remain legal tender. Estimates of how many are still out there vary, but they run into the hundreds of billions—far more than commerce needs, and more than enough to sit in jars and cash drawers for years. The Federal Reserve would be directed to limit remaining supply disruptions.
The more immediate headache is the checkout counter. Without a steady flow of new pennies, retailers have improvised. Some states allow rounding when exact change is unavailable; others restrict it; Arizona has made rounding mandatory in that situation. The result is a patchwork that leaves stores and customers guessing. Under the Common Cents Act, cash totals would be rounded to the nearest nickel on a symmetric basis: amounts ending in 1, 2, 6, or 7 cents round down; those ending in 3, 4, 8, or 9 cents round up. A $19.82 cash purchase would become $19.80; $19.83 would become $19.85. Cards, mobile payments, and checks would still settle to the exact cent. The federal rule would preempt conflicting state and local bans. Business groups have pressed the House to finish the bill before the fall shopping season, arguing that legal uncertainty is itself a cost.
The third piece of the bill targets the nickel, which has been a worse deal for taxpayers than the penny. The Mint reported that a five-cent coin cost 13.31 cents to produce in fiscal year 2025, after 13.78 cents the year before—the 20th straight year the nickel cost more than face value. The coin is still the 75 percent copper, 25 percent nickel alloy Congress locked in in 1866. Copper prices have made that recipe expensive. Both chamber versions would let Treasury prescribe a zinc-and-nickel composition, typically described as a zinc core with a nickel outer layer, after testing shows it cuts cost and has minimal impact on vending machines, meters, and coin counters. Weight could move from a rigid 5 grams to a 4-to-6-gram range. Zinc has traded well below copper, which is why the modern penny already uses a zinc core. Officials emphasize that any new nickel still has to work in the machines businesses already own.
The bill does not abolish the nickel. A separate House proposal to drop the five-cent coin has not advanced. Ending the penny can increase demand for nickels if more cash totals land on multiples of five, so making the existing denomination cheaper is the narrower fix Congress chose.
If the House clears the Senate text and the president signs it, the law would mainly ratify what has already happened and tidy the rules around it: no more circulating cents, a single rounding standard for cash, and permission to experiment with a cheaper nickel instead of another two decades of losses on every coin struck. That is modest legislation. It is also the kind of accounting problem Congress usually leaves on the table until metal prices or checkout chaos force a vote. Unanimous consent does not mean the coinage system is fixed. It means both parties finally agreed that losing money on every nickel, and arguing over pennies that no longer exist, was not worth the fight.
