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player ready...Your do-little Congress has finally put aside election-year posturing on matters ranging from estate taxes to deadly Firestone tires and agreed on something, in what amounts to a vivid, uplifting display of bipartisanship.
The lawmakers have agreed that the government should mint a lot more quarters.
And I mean a lot more quarters, perhaps even some with a picture of a huge pothole or some glad-handing Utah crooks on the back.
In case you were wondering, there were 21,369,655,295 quarters in circulation in 1998, according to the most recent Federal Reserve records (given me during a World Exclusive chat with bureaucrats Friday). Yes, that is more than 21 billion. Imagine how many Diet Pepsis and stale pretzels you could get out of the office vending machine with that pile.
Now there will be a lot more, as a result of activities taken in a virtually empty, large congressional hearing room last week.
Opting to make one of my occasional Journeys to the Obscure, I plunked myself down in a chair as the House Banking and Financial Services’ subcommittee on domestic and international monetary policy convened to consider expansion of one “immensely popular” program, as Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) put it, and the start of another one involving American coins.
The first involves the Circulating Quarter Dollar Program Act, a piece of legislation we have not heard about on the presidential campaign trail.
It was the brainchild of several politicians, including Rep. Mike Castle, a Delaware Republican. The idea was to pay honor to the states through coins with some relevant symbol on the back.
It ran into stiff resistance from fuddy-duddies at the U.S. Treasury. They dislike most anything new, and didn’t get why anybody would be interested. This is why they are genetically selected to spend portions of their adult lives at the U.S. Treasury.
Legislation finally met the approval of the fuddy-duddies after the Treasury commissioned a study replete with focus groups. The conclusion was that, yes, lots of Americans would collect such coins and that, yes, it would give them a nicer, warmer feeling about their big, bad, cold government filled with fuddy-duddies at the Treasury Department.
There was also the possibility of making money, because the actual cost to the Treasury of minting a quarter is 4 cents. The bookkeeping on our currency is a tad complicated, but after a quarter is minted, it magically becomes worth 25 cents.
It is bought at face value by the Federal Reserve, which in turn distributes it to the Fed’s regional banks and, ultimately, into the general banking system. Sometimes, the U.S. Mint distributes some directly to certain places, but the average money we see in circulation goes the Federal Reserve route.
Two years ago, they started minting these state coins. Check your pocket or purse, you likely have one. The 10-year program would take one state at a time, based on when it joined the union, meaning that Castle’s Delaware would be first.
In 1999 the Mint produced nearly 775 million Delaware quarters. It also produced 707 million heralding Pennsylvania, 662 million touting New Jersey, 940 million praising Georgia and 1.35 billion paying homage to Connecticut.
The quarters exited circulation nearly as fast as they entered. People young and old loved them, and not just lonely-hearts coin collectors, some of whom refer to themselves as numismatists.
Until 1999, the base demand for quarters through the decade had been between 1 billion and 1.5 billion coins a year, according to John Mitchell, deputy director of the Mint. Fueled by interest in the state program, it produced 4.4 billion that year.
This year, having completed Massachusetts, Maryland and South Carolina, and with New Hampshire and Virginia on deck, it will produce more than 6 billion quarters.
But because so many of them are quickly being sucked out of circulation, there is need to mint more (in part for the legions of cheap tippers in Washington), meaning more money will be made. (Given that weird bookkeeping, however, this will not help reduce the deficit.)
Federal surveys, Mitchell told me in our World Exclusive chat, suggest that 112 million Americans in 50 million homes have collected state quarters.
That suggests why the District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands all want to get into the action, to the slight chagrin of some lonely-hearts collectors, or numismatists.
Their congressional “delegates,” who cannot vote on legislation but get to gab on the floor of Congress and have twenty-something aides follow them slavishly, just like real congressmen, all showed up before Bachus’ committee.
It was all pro forma, of course, since the fix was in, but they proudly voiced their support.
“It is a source of great pride that on one side there will be George Washington and on the other side something that says, `District of Columbia,'” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.).
OK, I’ll admit it, I was wondering what they should put on the back of that coin.
An image of a huge pothole to underscore the city’s continuing municipal ineptitude? An image of former Mayor Marion Barry getting caught in a federal drug sting? Or maybe a smiling Deion Sanders, a football player who is this celebrity-starved town’s latest hero-in-the-making?
Then came Del. Robert Underwood (D-Guam), who informed that “U.S. Mint surveys indicate that about 15 million kids are collecting the commemorative quarters and, at the same time, learning about their country’s history and heritage. Commemorative quarters have outsold Pokemon cards a hundred times over.”
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He was followed by Del. Eni Faleomavaega (D-American Samoa), who is well-liked by Bachus even though the chairman cannot pronounce his name. He made some remark that didn’t seem to make a lot of sense, about having more sumo wrestlers and pro football players than any state. Huh? But nothing was going to interrupt this hourlong descent into political harmony.
Though just four of 24 committee members were around, including Democrat Jan Schakowsky and Republican Judy Biggert of Illinois, the legislation was passed and is very likely to make it into law.
But, incredibly, the monetary excitement was not over, explaining why I was not alone at the media table. There was a gent from Salt Lake City.
He was there because there was a related piece of legislation to approve a bill to allow the Treasury Department to mint a maximum of 80,000 5 dollar gold coins and a limit of 400,000 $1 silver coins “with a design emblematic of the participation of American athletes in the 2002 Olympic Winter Games” in Salt Lake City.
Bachus underscored that precise limits had been established, largely due to a minor fiasco brought by the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
Prodded by a politically potent Georgia delegation and a U.S. Olympics program craving extra revenues, the government actually suffered a loss because it turned out too many coins.
Normally, one or two commemorative coins are produced each year. But for the Olympics, a massive program was approved in which 22 separate types of coins were authorized, up to 18 million total, including ones with a tennis player and a blind runner.
In retrospect, the whole notion was goofy, because even Olympic coins tend to be mostly bought by actual collectors, who usually buy a total of 2 or 3 million coins a year at most.
The government never produced the authorized limit but the damage was done. Factoring in the costs of packaging, advertising and selling the commemoratives, the program lost $2.9 million. So they will be more modest this time.
That still leaves the matter of a design, which should be no problem.
After all, there was that scandal over the Salt Lake City organizing committee making payoffs to International Olympic Committee members before the city’s selection.
Instead of a sprinter passing a baton, show a local dignitary, in business suit, passing a $100 bill to some guy in dark shades, with the Wasatch Mountains in the background.
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.