As my previous comment states, the actual savings would be ten times the GAO’s estimate, owing to the GAO’s failure to incorporate the Treasury’s $1 per $1 coin debt reduction.

The $2 coin could be cent-sized.

Ideally a $2 coin should be introduced at the same time as the $1 bill is ended. It should be small and distinctive, perhaps multi-sided and/or bimetallic. However given the politics surrounding ANY “change to our change”, it might be more palatable to follow Canada’s course and simply increase $2 bill production for several years until the $1 coin has established itself. While continuing to print lower-denomination notes wouldn’t save the Treasury as much as eliminating everything less than $5, with $1 notes making up roughly 45% of the BEP’s output simply cutting that number by half would be a major improvement.

Yes – taxpayer money is saved THEORETICALLY and ON PAPER to look good for politicians. But the reality is that, just like when Canada eliminated one dollar bills, the costs to consumers on a daily basis rise from two main occurences:

1. When the dollar “psychologically” becomes the “new quarter,” retailers take advantage of this and jack up prices. It DID happen this way in Canada when their one dollar coin was introduced. I was there.
In fact the dollar coin aided the inflation rate enough that their dollar soon became trivial enough Canada introduced a two dollar coin. And, BTW, the news releases of those days show the Canadians felt forced into something they did not want.

2. The costs from large service providers such as banks, and those companies who deal with major amounts of change like vendors WILL rise in cost for the consumer b/c, as the Canadian bank told me back then, it costs a LOT more to ship 1,000,000 of coins instead of 1,000,000 in bills. So they pass the cost increases on to consumers.

Even small time venders will have to deal with weight and space inconvenience.

Its about the consumers giving up CONVENIENCE and paying more for daily services. Its not about politicians saying they can save taxpayer money.

If they really cared about saving taxpayer money – they never would have approved the making of the presidential dollar series since history shows EVERY dollar coin in US history was not accepted by the general populace who want bills for convenience sake. Now that they have egg on their face once again, and the dollar coins are sitting, unused in government vaults (as all previous dollar coins did), some politician is seeing a way to say he can save taxpayer dollars ad not tell the facts its all politics and will cost us more.

Here is my “I told you so,” ahead of time. History will repeat itself if this ridiculous law to eliminate dollar bills is passed. You WILL be paying more for everything.