Elon Musk has achieved feats once thought impossible, like popularizing electric vehicles through Tesla and catching falling rockets at SpaceX. But now he faces what may be an even more insurmountable challenge: overcoming political inertia in order to eliminate Americans' least-favorite form of money, the penny, which Barack Obama once cited as an apt metaphor for the U.S. government’s larger problems.
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency officially set its sights this week on the one-cent coins as part of its crusade to slash government spending. The move comes after Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who leads the Senate’s “DOGE Caucus,” sent a letter of suggestions to Musk that included “bad pennies” as an example of waste.
