Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005

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The Presidential $1 Coin Program (Public Law 109-145; 119 Stat. 2664) is an Act of Congress that directs the United States Mint to produce $1 coins with engravings of the United States Presidents on the obverse.

Reverse of presidential dollar coin

1 Legislative History
2 Program details
3 Coin details
4 Other provisions
5 References

[edit] Legislative History

Senate Bill 1047 was introduced in the United States Senate on May 17, 2005, by Senator John Sununu with over 70 cosponsors. It was reported favorably out of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs without amendment on July 29, 2005. The Senate passed it with a technical amendment (S.AMDT.26760), by Unanimous Consent on November 18, 2005. The House of Representatives passed it (291-113) on December 13, 2005 (A similar bill, H.R. 902, had previously passed in the House, but it was the Senate bill that was passed by both chambers.) The engrossed bill was presented to President George W. Bush on December 15, 2005, and he signed it into law on December 22, 2005.

[edit] Program details

The program will begin on January 1, 2007, and will be akin to the State Quarter program in that it will not end until every subject is honored. The program will feature four Presidents per year on the obverse, featuring one for three months before moving on to the next President in chronological order. Once begun, it will likely be called the Presidential Dollar Coin Program.

The reverse of the coins will bear the Statue of Liberty, the inscription '$1' and the inscription 'United States of America'. In addition, inscribed along the edge of the coin will be the year of minting or issuance of the coin, and also the legends E Pluribus Unum and 'In God We Trust.' The legend 'Liberty' will be absent from the coin altogether, since the decision was made that the image of the Statue of Liberty on the reverse of the coin was sufficient to convey the message of liberty. The text of the act does not specify the color of the coins, but per the U.S. Mint [1] "the specifications will be identical to those used for the current Golden dollar". According to the Mint, "The President Washington $1 Coin will be made available to the public around President’s Day, 2007, with the release date being February 15" [2].

This marks the first time since the St. Gaudens Double Eagle that the United States has issued a coin with edge lettering for circulation. An edge lettered coin is mostly rare in the world today outside the Eurozone. Edge lettered coins date back to the 1790s. The process was started to discourage the "shaving" of gold coin edges, a practice that was used to cheat payees.

The act had been introduced because of the failure of the Sacagawea $1 coin to gain wide-spread circulation in the United States. The act sympathized with the need of the nation's private sector for a $1 coin and expected that the appeal of changing the design would increase the public demand for new coins (as the public generally responded well to the State Quarter program). The program would also educate the public about the history of the nation's Presidents. Should the coin not catch on with the general public, the Mint is hoping that collectors will be as interested in the dollars as they were with the State Quarters, which generated about $4.6 billion in seigniorage between January 1999 and April 2005, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office.

Unlike the State Quarter program and the Westward Journey nickel series, which suspended the issuance of the current design during those programs, the act directs the Mint to continue to issue Sacagawea dollar coins during the Presidential series. At least 1/3 of the dollar coins issued in each year of the program must be Sacagawea dollars; furthermore, the Sacagawea design is required to continue after the program ends. These requirements were added at the behest of the North Dakota congressional delegation to ensure that Sacagawea, whom North Dakotans consider to be one of their own, ultimately remains on the dollar coin. However, Federal Reserve officials have indicated to congress that "if the Presidential $1 Coin Program does not stimulate substantial transactional demand for dollar coins, the requirement that the Mint nonetheless produce Sacagawea dollars would result in costs to the taxpayer without any offsetting benefits." In that event, the Federal reserve indicates that it would "strongly recommend that Congress reassess the one-third requirement." [3]

Previous versions of the act called for removing from circulation dollar coins issued prior to the Sacagawea dollar, most notably the Susan B. Anthony dollar, but the version of the act that became law merely directs the Secretary of the Treasury to study the matter and report back to Congress. However, the act does require Federal government agencies (including the United States Postal Service), businesses operating on Federal property, and Federally-funded transit systems to accept and dispense dollar coins by January 2008, and to post signs indicating that they do so. [4]

Even though it would take about 11 years to honor all the Presidents (George W. Bush is the 43rd President and the act allows for a coin for each of Grover Cleveland's two non-consecutive terms), the series may not run that long. The act provides that no former President will be depicted on a coin within two years of his death, and the series will end when all the then-eligible Presidents have been honored.

On November 22, 2006, the numismatic publication Coin World reported that the US Mint is considering minting Presidential dollar coins to silver dollars. However, such move would need Congressional approval. If approved, it is unclear when the these Presidential dollar coins would be produced. It is also unclear whether these dollar coins, should they be approved, would contain any real silver or not, though it seems that they will indeed be made of real silver. In either case, the Mint would still need the approval of Congress to produce the coins in anything other than the current manganese-brass clad composition. Another important note is that it is unclear whether or not the silver Presidential dollars will actually be released into circulation.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Coin details

Dollar coins will be issued bearing the likenesses of Presidents, as follows:^[5]

Release #	President #	President	Release date	Mintage figures	Design
1	1	George Washington	February 15, 2007	N/A
2	2	John Adams	2007	N/A
3	3	Thomas Jefferson	2007	N/A
4	4	James Madison	2007	N/A
5	5	James Monroe	2008	N/A	N/A
6	6	John Quincy Adams	2008	N/A	N/A
7	7	Andrew Jackson	2008	N/A	N/A
8	8	Martin Van Buren	2008	N/A	N/A
9	9	William Henry Harrison	2009	N/A	N/A
10	10	John Tyler	2009	N/A	N/A
11	11	James K. Polk	2009	N/A	N/A
12	12	Zachary Taylor	2009	N/A	N/A
13	13	Millard Fillmore	2010	N/A	N/A
14	14	Franklin Pierce	2010	N/A	N/A
15	15	James Buchanan	2010	N/A	N/A
16	16	Abraham Lincoln	2010	N/A	N/A
17	17	Andrew Johnson	2011	N/A	N/A
18	18	Ulysses S. Grant	2011	N/A	N/A
19	19	Rutherford B. Hayes	2011	N/A	N/A
20	20	James A. Garfield	2011	N/A	N/A
21	21	Chester A. Arthur	2012	N/A	N/A
22	22	Grover Cleveland	2012	N/A	N/A
23	23	Benjamin Harrison	2012	N/A	N/A
24	24	Grover Cleveland	2012	N/A	N/A
25	25	William McKinley	2013	N/A	N/A
26	26	Theodore Roosevelt	2013	N/A	N/A
27	27	William Howard Taft	2013	N/A	N/A
28	28	Woodrow Wilson	2013	N/A	N/A
29	29	Warren G. Harding	2014	N/A	N/A
30	30	Calvin Coolidge	2014	N/A	N/A
31	31	Herbert Hoover	2014	N/A	N/A
32	32	Franklin D. Roosevelt	2014	N/A	N/A
33	33	Harry S. Truman	2015	N/A	N/A
34	34	Dwight D. Eisenhower	2015	N/A	N/A
35	35	John F. Kennedy	2015	N/A	N/A
36	36	Lyndon B. Johnson	2015	N/A	N/A
37	37	Richard Nixon	2016	N/A	N/A
?? (See below)	40	Ronald Reagan	2016	N/A	N/A

Other Presidents who may be honored:: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, future Presidents.

The Act specifies that no former President may be depicted on a coin while he is still alive or within two years of his death. It also specifies that the series will end when every eligible President has been honored. Every former President who served after Nixon is still alive, except for Reagan. Reagan, who died in 2004, will be honored, but the timing of the release of his coin is uncertain. If, in 2016, either Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter (or both) will have been dead for at least two years, then Reagan's coin will be either the 39th or 40th in the series (depending on whether both Ford and Carter, or just one of them, will have been dead for two years). Otherwise, Reagan's coin will be the 38th (immediately following Nixon's). In any event, Reagan's coin will be released sometime in 2016, as either the second, third, or fourth in that year.

Once the program has terminated, continuation of the series for non-honored Presidents (who have died and were not included in this series) will require another act of Congress (31 USC 5112(n)(8)).

[edit] Other provisions

The act also has three other provisions, for:

Issuance of a $10 bullion coin for each President's First Lady, at the same time as the dollar coin honoring that President. The law calls for alternative designs to ensure program continuity through periods in which the President served without a spouse.
Issuance of a $50 bullion coin reproducing the 1913 Buffalo nickel designed by James Earle Fraser.
Redesign of the reverse of the Lincoln cent in 2009 to show four different scenes from Abraham Lincoln's life in honor of the bicentennial of his birth. These four scenes include:
1. his birth and early childhood in Kentucky;
2. his formative years in Indiana;
3. his professional life in Illinois; and
4. his presidency in Washington, D.C.

In 2009, numismatic cents will be issued for collectors that have the metallic copper content of cents minted in 1909.

After 2009, yet another redesigned reverse for the Lincoln cent is supposed to be minted; this "shall bear an image emblematic of President Lincoln's preservation of the United States of America as a single and united country," and so will replace the Lincoln Memorial reverse in use since 1959. However, it could be argued that the Lincoln Memorial itself meets the requirements of the Act through its design elements (mainly the 36 columns representing the states at his death and the names of all 48 states when it was constructed), so it is theoretically possible that the Lincoln Memorial reverse could return.