> By the 1990s, Kolbe says, he was introducing new legislation to kill the penny with every new session of Congress. But he kept facing resistance — for example

> By the 1990s, Kolbe says, he was introducing new legislation to kill the penny with every new session of Congress. But he kept facing resistance — for example, from the speaker of the House at the time, Dennis Hastert, who represented a district in Illinois, the home state of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, of course, is on the penny, and Kolbe says that proved to be a major roadblock. I hear this a lot, and I think its a weak argument. The original coinage act (1792?) authorized a $5 coin. Replace the Lincoln penny with the Lincoln $5 coin; you continue to have a Lincoln coin, you trade a useless coin for one that will be very useful for the next 100 years, and now all US currency with Lincoln on it is $5. Win-win-win.