Robert K. Triest, an economics professor at Northeastern University, noted that while a full discontinuation would require legislative approval, the Treasury Secretary might have some discretion to halt production.
“The process of discontinuing the penny in the U.S. is a little unclear. It would likely require an act of Congress, but the Secretary of the Treasury might be able to simply stop the minting of new pennies,” Triest explained.
Congress has made rules regarding currency under which changing the portrait to show Harriet Tubman doesn't require specific Congressional approval. (For example, the person must be deceased.) Historically and constitutionally choosing or ending entire denominations has been up to Congress.
No, it wasn’t, because the Second Legal Tender Act of 1862 as well as 12 USC 418 explicitly grants the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to approve new designs for currency. All of this information is easily googleable if you’d like to educate yourself.
"The Treasury Department announced in 2016 that Tubman would replace Jackson"
So in one instance, we have cancelling of minting new pennies, ototh we have the changing of a picture.
I do think there might be viable authority to cancel the minting of the penny in the same way that there might have been viable authority for Biden to mint a coin and cancel debt. Seems to be similar rules at play there.
Responding to your edit: It is absolutely and objectively unconstitutional according to the letter of the constitution, no matter what Random Economics Professor might say. Whether anyone will care is a different discussion entirely.
>(a) The Secretary of the Treasury—(1) shall mint and issue coins described in section 5112 of this title in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States;
luckily, the piece of paper it's written on is actually worthless. It's the idea of the constitution that is important, and it's being eroded away.
A lot of people (stupidly) thinks that the orange man is doing good because he's cutting all of those red tape to try make america great again. Somehow, they believe that as long as it's their own tribe, and they agree with the policy, breaking the rules is ok.
This is how staunch institutions that is the foundation of democracy falls.
Regardless of how good, a president should not have absolute power. Ruling by executive order is but another name for a tyrant king.
Canadian here, currently absolutely in shock of what's happening down south (and your president is constantly threatening to bring us in on this circus against our will -- if someone told me this would be happening a few short months ago, I would have laughed).
But honest question, since his approval rating is positive (!!!), I thought your whole founding ethos was a rebellion against complete powers of a king, yet a lot of your "freedom" people are cheering it on. How can this be explained? Is the cognitive dissonance just so massive??? Here in Canada, we HAVE a king, yet he doesn't rule us...
American here. Lived all over the country from small towns to now the largest city, lived in other countries, traveled extensively, served in the military, first in my entire extended family to graduate from college, was highly religious and conservative, now agnostic. I say all this to say that I've seen America from many different angles.
Here's my opinion: there's a rot at the very core of America, and as a result, many of us are extremely ignorant, petty, and cruel. Trying to discuss any of these issues with probably 40% of the country is utterly useless, because they've never traveled, they have no perspective on how other countries (or even other parts of this country) actually work, they have no education or sense of history to speak of, and their only source of info is blatant propaganda. They don't care what works, they have no vision for the world they want to build, they just don't want the other side to "win", even when that would be better for them. If we have to burn everything down to make sure the other side doesn't get the world they want, so be it. And they're proud of all of this.
When do kings get rebelled against? Typically when they stop listening and caring for their people. So maybe it's not rebelling against a king, I think it's rebelling against old ossified system that didn't and couldn't change anything for the better. Now a new system of ruling is finally doing something at least. A breath of fresh air for a stagnating fire. But sometimes adding fresh air to a stagnating fire will result in explosion.
