Pennies are worth one cent but cost 2.41 cents to actually make. Now while the penny was useful back when you could actually buy a product for one cent, it's not anymore. What we should do is what New Zealand does. They demonetized the penny and replaced all decimals in money with .05 or .10. If you want to stop the debt from going up a great way to start off is getting rid of useless things that cost the US money.
http://www.usmint.gov/faqs/circulating_coins/?action=faq_circulating_coin
http://www.mint.ca/store/mint/learn/phasing-out-the-penny-6900002
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