The Bid to Eliminate Dollar Bills

For lawmakers looking for ways to cut the projected $1.6 trillion deficit, David DuGoff has an idea: dollar coins. DuGoff, the owner of College Park Car Wash in Maryland, is a member of a new coalition, the Dollar Coin Alliance. The group's goal: outlawing dollar bills and replacing them with coins. Signing on to the cause is an odd mix of car wash owners and others who rely on vending machines that often reject paper bills; Brink's, the armored transport company that offers coin sorting and wrapping services; and mining companies, which would benefit from greater demand for metal.

DuGoff has been preaching the primacy of coinage for almost a decade. He argues that the current mood for deficit reduction makes this time different. The alliance is seizing on a report released earlier this month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm, that found using metal dollars instead of paper ones would save the government $5.5 billion over the next 30 years, since it earns revenue on the difference between the coins' production costs and their face value. That translates to about $184 million annually, an amount that the coalition concedes won't balance the budget but isn't pocket change, either. Citizens Against Government Waste, a prominent group of budget hawks, has joined the campaign. "This cuts across party lines," says Shawn Smeallie, the alliance's lobbyist and a former aide to President George H.W. Bush. "For a Republican, you are not raising one tax. And for Democrats, you are not cutting one program."