"As will shock you all, calls for Chester A. Arthur coins are not big," said Biden, according to Reuters, referring to the 21st president, who died in 1886. "I'm not commenting on his presidency, but it just is not very high." ... The announcement was part of a Cabinet meeting aimed at discussing ways to rein in wasteful government spending.

The Treasury Department estimates there are 1.4 billion surplus presidential dollar coins in storage because there is no demand for them. The U.S. Mint will continue to mint presidential dollar coins in the future but only on a limited basis for collectors.

At first glance this would seem like a no-brainer. Nobody wants the coins so why continue to mint them and store them, right?

But it's a bit more complicated than that.

For starters -- it is assumed that because you rarely see them in change that nobody wants them. Not true.

There are two chief reasons why you never see one of these dollars in change.

1. The Treasury Department continues to print paper dollars. Just about every other industrial country in the world has abandoned paper dollars for coins. We remain one of the lone holdouts because we have some sort of idiotic political fear of making the change.

Coins are more expensive to mint but cheaper in the long run because a coin lasts more than 30 years while a paper dollar wears out in a couple years. So it actually saves money to use dollar coins instead of paper dollars.

2. Dollar coins will not be widely accepted and used until retailers and vending machine operators start to distribute and use them. One of the chief reasons that major retailers do not use the coins is because they are heavier and thus more expensive to ship from federal reserve vaults.

And the program has had other problems. Some people figured out that they could order massive quantities of dollar coins on their credit cards and then immediately deposit them in the bank and pay off the balance. But in doing so they accrued points/miles on their cards.

That forced the Mint to make it harder to order coins with a credit card.

The Mint actually produces two different dollar coins. In addition to the presidential dollars, the Mint continues to produce Native American dollars for circulation. there was no word on whether those coins will continue to be minted.

The Native American dollar is the evolution of what used to be called the Sacagawea dollar. When the presidential dollar program was produced, nobody wanted to anger advocates of Native Americans on coinage, so it was decided to mint both.

The solution to the problem is obvious.

Quit printing paper dollars.