STATE POLLING DATA:

PRO: ______%

CON: ______%

IDK: ______%

IMPORTANCE: ____

INTRODUCTION:

Suppose you saw a penny, dirty and discolored, lying on the ground. Would you really make the effort to bend over or squat down to pick it up? What would you do with it? Save it? In a bank? Use it? What costs a penny anymore? Use it for change? Most stores either round off or give you a penny to make the correct payment. Inflation over the years has reduced the copper penny to a 95% Zinc coin that costs $.81 to make a $1.00 worth of pennies. Fifty years ago you could by 5 sticks of Bazooka Bubble Gum for a penny, today one stick costs a nickel.

WHAT THIS BILL WOULD DO:

This bill would end funding for making pennies. Pennies would remain legal tender as long as you have one.

PRO ARGUMENTS:

Last year, the United States of America mints made 10,300,000,000 pennies. That is enough to give every living person on the planet one penny and still have 3,000,000,000 left over. The cost last year of making pennies was $82,000,000.00. The COE of KWIK KEY Lock and Safe Company stated, "We lose dollars every year on time wasted on pennies. Abraham Lincoln would be honored much more by placing his portrait on the walls of our homes then on the face of a coin everyone disparages." By collecting the pennies and removing them from circulation our government could gain up to $10.3 million. Nickels would become the base denomination of American currency. U.S. Mints currently earn $.03 per nickel as opposed to a fraction of a cent per penny.

CON ARGUMENTS:

Removing the penny from circulation would speed up the process of inflation. Rounding up to the nearest nickel would soon escalate to the dime, then the quarter, the half-dollar, and then the dollar. Shortly, we would find the dollar supplanting the penny as the lowest denomination of U. S. currency. Additionally, Abraham Lincoln is one of our most revered Presidents who freed the slaves, reunited our country, and serves as a symbol of what American Leadership is all about. The penny is a legacy that we cannot afford to lose.

CONCLUSION:

It is time to change how we make change in America. Pennies have value, but only if they are used in large quantities. Nickels are the future of American change.