Nearly $1.4 billion in surplus dollar coins are sitting in Federal Reserve vaults because so few people want them. So Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced at a cabinet meeting today that the Administration was suspending the production of Presidential dollar coins for circulation.

Until today, the Mint was on pace to produce an additional 1.6 billion dollar coins through 2016.

The Administration will still be required, by law, to continue producing a relatively small number of the coins to be sold to collectors, at no cost to taxpayers.

But instead of producing 70-80 million coins per President, the United States Mint expects to save at least $50 million annually over the next several years by halting the presidential coin series.

We simply shouldn’t be wasting taxpayer money on money that taxpayers aren’t using.” – Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner

“In these tough times, Americans are making every dollar count, and they deserve the same from their government. We simply shouldn’t be wasting taxpayer money on money that taxpayers aren’t using,” said Secretary Geithner.

The Vice President also used the occasion to announce significant progress had been made in cracking down on fraudulent practices that also wastes taxpayers dollars. The Department of Justice recovered more than $5.6 billion in fraudulent funding activities government-wide in 2011, a new record, he said, with $2.9 billion coming from health care fraud alone. The Administration also said the Department of Health and Human Services, expects to reduce Medicare fraud further by telling prescription drug plans to withhold payment when they see signs of suspicious activity related to specific drugs: OxyContin, Percocet, and other narcotics and painkillers.

The presidential coins got their start in 2005, when Congress enacted the Presidential $1 Coin Act, which mandated that the United States Mint issue new Presidential $1 Coins with the likeness of every deceased President. The mint was to produce coins for four presidents each year.

But according to the White House press office, more than 40 percent of the $1 coins that the United States Mint has issued have been returned to the Federal Reserve, because nobody wants to use them.

Following is a list of the coins issues so far:

Year	President	Years Served	Release Date
2007	George Washington	1789-1797	February 15, 2007
2007	John Adams	1797-1801	May 17, 2007
2007	Thomas Jefferson	1801-1809	August 16, 2007
2007	James Madison	1809-1817	November 15, 2007
2008	James Monroe	1817-1825	February 14, 2008
2008	John Quincy Adams	1825-1829	May 15, 2008
2008	Andrew Jackson	1829-1837	August 14, 2008
2008	Martin Van Buren	1837-1841	November 13, 2008
2009	William Henry Harrison	1841	February 19, 2009
2009	John Tyler	1841-1845	May 21, 2009
2009	James K. Polk	1845-1849	August 20, 2009
2009	Zachary Taylor	1849-1850	November 19, 2009
2010	Millard Fillmore	1850-1853	February 18, 2010
2010	Franklin Pierce	1853-1857	May 20, 2010
2010	James Buchanan	1857-1861	August 19, 2010
2010	Abraham Lincoln	1861-1865	November 18, 2010
2011	Andrew Johnson	1865-1869	February 17, 2011
2011	Ulysses S. Grant	1869-1877	May 19, 2011
2011	Rutherford B. Hayes	1877-1881	August 18, 2011
2011	James A. Garfield	1881	November 17, 2011
2012	Chester A. Arthur	1881-1885	February 16, 2012
2012	Grover Cleveland	1885-1889	May 17, 2012
2012	Benjamin Harrison	1889-1893	August 16, 2012
2012	Grover Cleveland	1893-1897	November 15, 2012
2013	William McKinley	1897-1901
2013	Theodore Roosevelt	1901-1909
2013	William Howard Taft	1909-1913
2013	Woodrow Wilson	1913-1921
2014	Warren Harding	1921-1923
2014	Calvin Coolidge	1923-1929
2014	Herbert Hoover	1929-1933
2014	Franklin D. Roosevelt	1933-1945
2015	Harry S. Truman	1945-1953
2015	Dwight D. Eisenhower	1953-1961
2015	John F. Kennedy	1961-1963
2015	Lyndon B. Johnson	1963-1969
2016	Richard M. Nixon	1969-1974
2016	Gerald Ford	1974-1977