Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Trying To Kill Pennies, And Wyoming Has Mixed Reactions With That

President Donald Trump has tasked Elon Musk and his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to ferret out wasteful bureaucratic spending. It seems one of DOGE’s first targets is the lowly penny.

Not only are they annoying, inefficient and not really used anymore, they also cost more than 3 cents each to make, costing the U.S. Mint to lose $179 million making pennies in 2023, DOGE posted X (formerly Twitter) on Trump’s second day in office.

A penny for Wyomingites’ thoughts about life without those tiny little Lincoln heads is mixed.

“The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY 2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced,” DOGE posted, citing online currency website JM Bullion. “Penny (or 3 cents) for your thoughts.”

Word of the potential removal of the penny brought questions to mind for a bank manager, as well as a few residents and businesspeople in Casper.

Mary Baker, branch manager for Platte Valley Bank in southwest Casper, said doing away with the penny is “an interesting concept that I would have to grasp.”

She said the bank routinely has customers showing up with jars of coins, including pennies, to put through the coin counters.

“We also have a lot of business customers who come in and get their daily rotation of coins,” she said. “So, it’s always quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. It’s never just quarters, they always are requesting rolls of pennies, so it would be a big adjustment, I think.”

Even so, fewer customers want to deal with pennies, said Kayla Moran, a financial services representative at First Interstate Bank in Cheyenne.

“Some people request we not give them the change, like pennies,” she said. “They say keep the small change.”

Was COVID A Penny-Killer?

Baker said her bank keeps about $300 in rolls of pennies for the businesses it serves. She said business customers typically take between $5 to $10 in pennies when they come to get change.

She said getting rid of the penny would mean changes for banks as well as other businesses because there are so many transactions that involve the coin.

“I think it would take a big adjustment to not do the pennies anymore,” she said.

Moran agreed, but also said that seems to be where the momentum is heading. She’s ordering fewer pennies now, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic caused a prolonged shortage of change of all denominations, and since production has ramped up again, the Mint is just making fewer of them because there’s less demand, she said.

While she understands people who think dealing with pennies is just annoying, she understands that as more transactions are digital, people just don’t carry physical money anymore.

“I wouldn’t say they’re annoying, but it’s changed a lot because of COVID,” she said. “We order a lot less, and I think I would be OK with (doing away with pennies).”

More Complicated For Businesses

At Sutherlands, a home improvement and building materials store in Casper, Assistant Manager Spencer Guthmiller said pennies are kind of a “nuisance,” and the store does about 80% of its business through credit card sales.

“We could make changes to our pricing to eliminate pennies,” he said.

But Guthmiller said the complicated part would be accounting for the mandated taxes the store puts on top of its prices. Changes would need to be done in a way that businesses don’t incur losses.

Guthmiller said businesses are going to need pennies unless they round the numbers for sales tax.

“But how do you account for that on your accounting?” he asked. “In our business, we make pennies on every dollar at the end of the year. If we had to round and lost money on certain prices, that could affect our business negatively, I suppose.”

Casper resident Kate Sprecher was sitting in the local Walmart parking lot in her car when contemplating the place of the penny in modern society.

She said she used to collect pennies, but stopped that practice. She agrees that eliminating the penny would make it complicated for paying sales tax.

“The sales tax if it comes up to an odd number, then we are going to have to change the prices of everything so that it ends up at an even number,” she said. “Now they’ve raised our taxes to 6%, I liked it better when it was 5% it was easier to figure stuff out.”

Penny Saver

For Leroy Snider of Casper the news about a potential penny purge brought a frown to his face.

“I don’t like anything that Trump is doing,” he said.

As for the pennies, Snider said, “They’ve been here my whole life. I save them and then I take them and put them in those coin machines.”

Snider said when he gets coins as change, he turns the pennies over searching for any potentially valuable wheat pennies.

“They are harder to get now,” he said, holding out a hand of change he just received from Walmart. He also looks for silver pennies, but “you don’t hardly find them anymore.”

At the Depend A Pawn US shop that deals in gold and silver, owner Jim Romango said he gets lots of people who come in with jars of pennies, but he tells them he doesn’t deal with those like a coin shop would.

His store has a display of gold and silver coins, and those are the only ones he will buy. He said he really doesn’t have an opinion on the potential loss of the penny.

“It just means that inflation is so bad that pennies aren’t good anymore,” he said. “Don’t let the inflation get that bad.”

They Cost How Much?

At the Family Dollar store on South Greeley Highway in Cheyenne, Brandi Dellenbaugh said her customers will use change, including pennies, fairly often.

Like Snider, Dellenbaugh said she used to collect coins and still has a habit of inspecting any change she gets.

So, there’s a sentimental attachment to pennies, but if they were eliminated, she’s OK with that, too.

Coworker John Butts also said he personally is a fan of the penny, but that he doesn’t really consider it as serious currency anymore.

“They’re fun to collect, but I don’t really use them as ‘money’ money,” he said.

At Wagner’s Outdoor Outfitters in Casper, owner Shawn Wagner shrugged his shoulders at the news.

“When I first came to Casper to run Rocky Mountain Sports in 2007, back then our sales were 25% card and 75% cash and check, and now it’s about 20% cash and check and 80% card, so it’s not a huge deal,” he said.

He said Canada already got rid of its penny years ago, so the DOGE proposal is not a new idea. Most of his customers who pay cash and get pennies in change typically throw them in a little coin bin by the register.

So, it would save space in his register and coin bin.

“I just won’t give them any,” he said.

When told it costs more than 3 cents to make each penny, Dellenbaugh said that would be a deal-breaker for her. Nostalgia aside, that’s just not good policy, she said.

“Yeah, I guess that’s pretty dumb if it costs that much more to make them,” she said. “Kind of tells you the government’s behind it, huh?”

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.