A Penny for Your Thoughts
Does DOGE Make Cents?
Donald Trump finally is doing something that may achieve a bipartisan consensus: stop the minting of the penny. It costs 3.7¢ to produce and distribute each one, and Americans tend not to use them much. Of course, by law, he only can stop new pennies from being minted; only Congress has the authority to withdraw the penny from circulation.
But let's take a page from Trump's playbook, and put that legal consideration aside. Since his inauguration a month ago, Trump has let loose a tsunami of executive orders creating a cascade of controversies ranging from renaming the Gulf of Mexico to dismantling USAID, shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to firing the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and taking over as its president.
I've been watching Trump toss bright, shiny penny executive orders to his MAGA crowd over the past month, and by now they've surely saved up a wealth of them in their piggy banks. So here's my 2¢ worth. After all, you know what they say about pennies . . .
Like a Bad Penny: Trump has stacked his Cabinet with bad-pennies who have little or no expertise to oversee their departments. However, these freshly-minted nominees do share one costly characteristic: they'll do whatever the President wants. So they'll keep turning up whenever he needs them.
Penny Arcade: Take your Daughter (son) to Work Day arrived well ahead of the fourth Thursday in April this year. On February 12 Elon Musk, the unelected tech mogul illegally dismantling our government, showed up at a press conference in the Oval Office with a very interesting prop: his 4-year-old son.
Need I point out the double standard? Suppose a woman summoned to a high-profile news conference in the Oval Office with the President had hoisted her pre-school child on her shoulders while answering questions about eviscerating U.S. government departments and agencies. Can you imagine the avalanche of misogynous comments that would ensue?
What was Musk's purpose? To soften his image? To mimic the photos of John Kennedy, Jr. sitting on the Oval Office floor near his dad at his desk? Surely not to draw attention to the lack of affordable child care! Twice-married, Musk has fathered 12 children; 6 children with one ex-wife, and the rest with various ex-girlfriends. Call me old-fashioned, but Musk also wore his black MAGA hat in the Oval Office, as he mouthed platitudes like this one: "The two ingredients to cutting the budget deficit in half are competence and caring." But does using his son as a prop reveal how much he cares about him?
Penny-pinching or something else? Although Musk's assignment from Trump is to cut the budget deficit in half, USAID only has a $40+ billion budget. During the Oval Office press conference, Musk admitted that DOGE incorrectly stated USAID had sent $50 million of condoms to Gaza. "Nobody bats 1.000," he said. The Dept. of Education is allocated only a tiny fraction of the U.S. budget. So this seems less about waste, fraud, and abuse than a political hit job, and scoring points with Trump's base by cutting agencies and departments he demonized on the campaign trail.
Cut off without a penny. Since its creation in 2010, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has returned $21 billion to consumers, in addition to banning medical debt from consumers' credit reports and cracking down on "junk fees" and excessive late payment credit card fees. Its funding comes from the Federal Reserve. The CFPB has made enemies of large financial institutions and credit card companies. But is it a coincidence that Elon Musk also is getting ready to roll out his mobile app, X Money Account? Similar to Venmo, it would be subject to the oversight of the CFPB. Wouldn't it be easier to conduct business if the CFPB is a neutered watchdog?
Pennywise and Pound-Foolish: So many examples fit under this category, including buy-outs of federal employees, and paying them to quit work. Cruel pink slips clearly are intended to demoralize them – saying their jobs aren't in the public interest. All this, when Trump knows there's no money in the federal budget past March 14. What about reducing reimbursement of indirect costs from National Institute of Health grants almost overnight? Does this include the federal grant research money Gov. Reynolds is planning on to help get to the bottom of Iowa's rising cancer rates?
Pretty Penny: Deporting migrants in C-17 military cargo planes costs a pretty penny – far more than using commercial charter planes. A flight from El Paso to Guatemala carrying 80 people can cost around $3,918.75 per person, compared to a contracted charter deportation flight costing about $1,168.75 per person. (Charters also accommodate more migrants.) The Trump administration already is running out of pennies to follow through with his wildly unrealistic deportation promises. What are the future costs of expanding Guantanamo Bay to warehouse deported migrants?
Penny ante: The purchase of paper straws by the federal government is ending within 45 days according to the Trump administration. Apparently the rationale is to counteract a Biden "woke" initiative to reduce plastic pollution. Trump would like to extend this nationwide by March 27, but it's unclear if it’s considered a waste, fraud, and abuse issue. Is this the last straw?
Penny Saved, Penny Earned: Although it was previously reported that the Trump administration would purchase $400 million worth of armored Tesla vehicles in fiscal 2025, within a few hours, the purchase was described as "on-hold." It might have been a hold-over from the Biden administration. However, Musk runs six companies, including multi-billion contracts with the federal government. He also is raising funds for his xAI Company, and as civil servants are eliminated, some suspect he plans to infiltrate it into the government. No doubt he's looking at the U.S. federal government as his private cash cow.
Rev Up Your Calculators
What do all these pennies add up to? Musk told the press conference last Wednesday that all the cost savings and fraud uncovered were posted on his DOGE web page. However, at the time it only contained a logo. A day or so later, the site was populated by a bunch of X posts that directed users back to his X platform. On Friday it was hacked. Does it still read: Receipts Coming Soon?
Some say a fool and his money are soon parted. But who will foot the bill for the DOGE mistakes and lack of transparency? Musk, directed by Trump, seems more focused on breaking the bank than saving Americans pennies on the dollar.
So, let's return to A penny for Your Thoughts. None of DOGE's actions to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse seem to be conducted with any semblance of thoughtfulness. This includes 325 lay-offs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the U.S, nuclear stockpile. (Reportedly, these employee terminations were partially rescinded.) Apparently no one was aware it handled nuclear security. Could its title have offered any clue?
Today there are 240 billion pennies in circulation. If the penny is discontinued, what happens to all of those piggy banks and jars we use to save our pennies? What about all of our penny loafers? Minting new pennies may be wasteful, but stopping it isn’t likely to save much money. Without pennies, businesses would need to round up or down to the nearest nickel. Would this result in a need to make more nickels, which cost 13.8 cents to mint?
No matter, our members of Congress and the Trump administration today are operating on the costly assumption that government civil service workers are simply a dime a dozen. Wouldn't you like to hold our leadership upside down, shake them hard enough to empty out their pockets, and see if there's any common cents left in them?
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I trust you feel better getting all those penny puns off your chest!
This whole thing is so chaotic and so cruel. There’s no thought to who is valuable in these agencies. They’re just lopping off heads indiscriminately. And to be fired by a late night email is heartless.
When are people - when are Iowans going to wake up to the damage that’s being done?
Best one yet ….
Getting rid of pennies— and the resulting savings? Well, it doesn’t make “cents” to me, but then there’s not much “sense” in this administration anyway ….. just another distraction.