By a unanimous vote, the Senate has approved a facelift for the penny, nickel, dime, quarter and 50-cent piece, but a key House subcommittee is questioning the proposal.
Does the public really want to give a new look to Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Washington and Kennedy?
As long as there is any doubt, sources say the legislation will remain bottled up in the House subcommittee on consumer affairs and coinage, where it has languished for two years despite sponsorship by important lawmakers such as Reps. Henry Gonzales (D-Texas) and Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).
That hasn`t discouraged Diane Wolf, the New Yorker who launched the drive for a wholesale redesign of U.S. circulating coins when she was U.S. commissioner of fine arts in the Reagan administration. Wolf is still lobbying hard for the bill.
She argues that a redesign not only is overdue aesthetically but also would generate a billion dollars in extra revenue for the U.S. Treasury, because the public would at first hoard the new coins as souvenirs and later would convert coins now in circulation into collector`s items.
Under the Senate bill, the redesign would be phased in over six years. The obverse, or ”heads,” sides of the coins would continue to feature the presidents they do now-Lincoln on the penny, Jefferson on the nickel, Roosevelt on the dime, Washington on the quarter and Kennedy on the half dollar-but their images would be freshened up.
On the ”tails,” or reverse, sides, basic American freedoms drawn from the Bill of Rights would be depicted. The size, shape, weight, color and metallic content of the coins would remain unchanged. So would inscriptions on the coins, most notably: ”In God We Trust.”
Sounds good, but the bill faces an uphill struggle, unless the public goes for it.