The House voted without a single dissent to pass the Common Cents Act, permanently banning the U.S. Treasury from minting new pennies, a rare bipartisan move that codifies President Trump's directive to stop wasting taxpayer money on coins that cost more to make than they're worth.
Republicans and Democrats found common ground Monday when every member present backed H.R. 3074, the legislation led by Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan and Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat who serves as ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. The bill would prohibit the Treasury from producing any new one-cent coins and require businesses to round cash transactions "to the nearest amount divisible by five for the payment or transfer of cash," Breitbart News reported.
Pennies already in circulation would remain legal tender. But no new ones would roll off the Mint's presses, ever again, if the Senate follows through.
The math behind the vote is straightforward. Producing a single penny now costs 3.69 cents, according to a Treasury press release on the decision, roughly three times the coin's face value. The Treasury estimated an immediate annual savings of $56 million once production stops entirely.
President Trump set the process in motion early last year when he instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt new penny production. By May 2025, the Treasury had placed its final order for penny blanks, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.S. Mint struck its last batch of pennies in November 2025, ending a run of 232 years.
The Common Cents Act would make that administrative decision permanent, ensuring no future administration could quietly restart the presses. It takes effect one year after Senate passage, giving businesses time to adjust their cash-handling systems.
Unanimous votes in the House are rare enough to be noteworthy. In a chamber where internal feuds can derail routine business, the penny bill sailed through without a single objection from either party.
Under the bill's framework, cash transactions ending in one, two, six, or seven cents would round down, while those ending in three, four, eight, or nine cents would round up, the Washington Examiner reported. The rounding applies only to cash payments, credit and debit transactions would continue to settle at the exact amount.
The legislation also directs the Treasury to monitor the rounding system's effects on vulnerable populations, a provision that likely helped secure Democratic support for the measure.
Canada eliminated its penny in 2013 and adopted a similar rounding system. The transition there drew little public backlash. The Common Cents Act follows that basic template, standardizing rules nationally so businesses do not face a patchwork of state-level requirements.
Monday's vote stands out against a legislative calendar that has often been consumed by partisan fights. While other major House votes this session have drawn sharp party-line divisions, the penny bill proved that fiscal common sense can still unite the chamber when the numbers are obvious enough.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where passage is widely expected. But no vote has been scheduled, and the upper chamber has not publicly committed to a timeline. Just The News noted that the unanimous House vote gives the measure strong momentum heading into Senate deliberations.
If the Senate acts, the rounding rules and the permanent production ban would take effect one year later, giving retailers, banks, and vending-machine operators a full year to update their systems.
The broader legislative session has seen the House move on a range of measures with varying degrees of bipartisan cooperation. Some bills, like recent measures that drew a handful of Democratic crossover votes, passed on narrower margins. The penny bill's clean sweep is a different animal entirely.
Open questions remain. The bill does not appear to address existing penny stockpiles held by the Mint or Treasury, and it is unclear whether the rounding mandate includes any transition-period accommodations beyond the one-year implementation window.
Floor scheduling in the Senate can be unpredictable. Leadership decisions about what reaches the floor often depend on political calculations that have nothing to do with a bill's merits.
Still, a coin that costs nearly four cents to make and buys nothing on its own has few defenders left in Washington. When both parties agree the government is losing money on every unit it produces, the only real question is why it took this long to stop.
