AS DIRECTOR OF the U.S. Mint, I have lots of Susan B. Anthony dollars - about 230 million of them. They've been lying around in vaults for nearly 16 years, with few prospects we'll empty our vaults anytime soon.
Before any legislation is considered to create yet another dollar coin and abolish the dollar bill, I hope we will remember the experience we had with the Susan B. in 1979 and learn the obvious lesson: Forcing a dollar coin on an unreceptive American public will be expensive, misguided and is doomed to fail.Advocates of the dollar coin have claimed that substituting a dollar coin for a dollar note will provide large savings for the government's coffers. But based on an analysis done by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), figures presented by advocates of the dollar coin are misleading.
Supporters claim a dollar coin will save $450 million a year. But the CBO found that most of this money can't be counted in the budget. CBO says that over the next five years the real savings would only amount to $20 million a year, but that estimate does not include the millions of dollars the Mint will have to spend to produce billions of new dollar coins.
The heart of the matter is that the American people simply don't want a dollar coin. For more than a decade, opinion polls have confirmed again and again that the resistance the public showed during the launch of the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin is strong and still intact.
A 1990 Gallup poll found that while 34 percent of Americans approved making a $1 coin available, approval fell to a mere 15 percent if introducing the coin required eliminating the $1 note. Separate polls in 1994 by Yankelovich and Market Facts reconfirmed overwhelming opposition to substituting the dollar coin for the dollar note.
It's easy to see why Americans don't want a new dollar coin. Right now, you can carry around a wad of dollar bills in your money clip, wallet, or purse and hardly realize it.
Compared to an equivalent quantity of dollar notes, however, coins are cumbersome and inconvenient to carry. The dollar note is universally recognized and accepted, a symbol of the economic strength and stability of the United States. But most of all, Americans resent the federal government's denying them the free choice of their preferred cur-rency.
As long as the American people don't want a dollar coin, there is significant risk that the new one, like its two predecessors in the past 25 years, will never circulate. And therefore none of the cost savings claimed by proponents will materialize.
I doubt that dollar coin advocates can force their fellow citizens to accept a coin they have overwhelmingly and repeatedly rejected. So give the buck a break. It has been and will be the overwhelming choice of Americans for day-to-day transactions.
Forcing an unwanted dollar coin on the public doesn't make sense.
If we insist on challenging history, we'll have another failed attempt to force American taxpayers to do what someone else thinks is good for them - against their will.
And the U.S. Mint will have several billion new dollar coins to stack in our vaults next to the 230 million Susan B's left over from 16 years ago.