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DOGE’s investigation revealed the truth, Trump acted, and taxpayers stood to save $56 million every single year — exactly the kind of efficiency voters sent him to Washington to accomplish.
The Treasury finalized its last order for blanks in May, pushed out the remaining inventory in June, and by August, the final batch of pennies had been distributed.
That should have been the easy part.
Instead, the same bureaucrats who ignored the waste for decades managed to turn a straightforward transition into a nationwide headache.
For months, the bureaucracy had one job: help the country transition away from the penny.
Instead, they handed America a black hole of silence.
No direction for retailers.
No guidance for states.
No consistency from banks.
Nothing.
The Federal Reserve gave a limp notification that penny shipments would simply end when they “ran out.” That’s it.
Louisiana banker Troy Richards received a vague email in August saying shipments would be “curtailed.”
“Little did we know that those shipments were already over for us,” Richards said.
His branch burned through its remaining $1,800 in pennies within two weeks, and the Fed offered no plan, no support, and no timeline.
This is the hallmark of federal incompetence — they knew exactly when the supply would end, yet provided zero preparation for the businesses expected to deal with the fallout.
Across the country, retailers are running out of pennies entirely. Some stores can’t give exact change. Others are desperately begging customers to bring in coins.
One convenience chain, Sheetz, offered free sodas for jars of pennies. Another grocer, Giant Eagle, doubled the value of customer penny exchanges just to get enough coinage to function.
The meltdown isn’t simply due to production ending. It’s because Washington’s coin distribution system is collapsing under its own mismanagement.
The Federal Reserve relies on 170 coin terminals, many run by armored carriers. Now, one-third have stopped accepting or distributing pennies altogether.
The result?
Surplus pennies sit untouched in some regions while stores in other states are bone dry.
Banking groups are warning that Washington’s failure to maintain the distribution system is artificially creating a shortage — even though 250 billion pennies are still in circulation.
That incompetence is now colliding with state laws that forbid price rounding. In many jurisdictions, cash and card customers must be charged the same amount. Rounding up even a penny violates those laws — meaning lawsuits are on the table.
As a result, stores are losing money.
Kwik Trip, a major Midwest chain, is rounding down every cash purchase to the nearest nickel — a move expected to cost the company $3 million next year.
“It hit a lot sooner than anybody thought,” said Dave Niemi.
Meanwhile, Treasury officials won’t respond to questions.
The Fed blames Treasury.
Congress shrugs and looks the other way.
No one wants to be responsible.
The U.S. isn’t the first country to ditch the penny. But it may be the first to completely botch it.
Canada eliminated its penny over a decade ago with a clear plan, public communication, bank coordination, and a smooth transition.
Britain’s currency reforms in the 1960s and ’70s were meticulously organized.
Washington had multiple successful models to follow. Instead, it chose chaos.
Jeff Lenard from the National Association of Convenience Stores — a longtime advocate for ending the penny — was stunned.
“We have been advocating abolition of the penny for 30 years. But this is not the way we wanted it to go,” Lenard said.
Retailers and banks are now pleading for federal guidance.
“We don’t want the penny back,” he added. “We just want some sort of clarity from the federal government on what to do, as this issue is only going to get worse.”
Trump made the right call. DOGE identified the waste. The problem isn’t the reform — it’s the incompetent bureaucracy tasked with implementing it.
This penny fiasco is the purest example of why Trump launched DOGE and put Elon Musk at the helm: Washington simply cannot fix itself.
Left unchecked, career bureaucrats will waste money, ignore problems, and botch reforms every time.
If the swamp can’t handle eliminating a one-cent coin, imagine what else they’re bungling behind the scenes.
The penny disaster shows that draining the swamp isn’t just about cutting bad programs — it’s about replacing the people who created the waste to begin with.
