by Jim Tankersley

America's Great Penny Crisis moved one step closer to resolution (of sorts) today, when the House passed a bill to change the metallic composition of the one-cent coin.

Supporters of the measure, approved by voice vote, say it will save taxpayers more than $1 billion in production costs over the next decade by allowing the U.S. Mint to switch to less-expensive metals. As we reported earlier this year, it currently costs 1.7 cents to produce every penny and 10 cents for every nickel.

The bill also would require the Mint to begin churning out a primarily steel penny within 270 days of it becoming law.

Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio) sponsored the bill, but two Illinois congressmen had big roles in shaping it: Rep. Luis Gutierez (D-Ill.), who chaired the subcommittee hearings on the bill, and Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who authored a similar bill last year that this measure mirrored in several respects. Both urged and celebrated the bill's passage.,

"If we continue minting coins with the current metal content," Gutierrez said on the House floor this week, "with each new penny and nickel we issue, we will also be contributing to our national debt by almost as much as the coin is worth. These losses are mounting rapidly, and we need to act immediately to lower the costs of producing the penny and the nickel."

Roskam touted the bill's similarity to his penny legislation in a press release. "Congress today took a step in the right direction by reining in one of the billions of dollars in wasteful government spending programs," he said. "Albeit a small step, it marks a common sense solution that will save the hard-earned dollars of Illinois families."

Notably opposing the bill was the Mint, which complained it doesn't give enough power to the Treasury to regulate coin composition and that the 270-day steel-penny window is unrealistically short. Mint Director Edmund Moy called the rest of the bill overly "prescriptive and limiting" in a letter to Congress this week.