When will the new president dollars come out this year?

It’s unclear.

The next coin — that of Chester A. Arthur, the nation’s 21st chief executive — is supposed to come out within the next few months. (No date had been released as of Friday.)

But, unlike its predecessors, it, along with those that follow, will be produced only according to demand and won’t go into general circulation.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at the end of last year ordered a halt to the mass production and release of the coins — 1.4 billion of which the Federal Reserve has been forced to store because no one wants them.

Lawmakers had hoped that the Presidential $1 Coin Program, signed into law in 2005, would tap into the newfound interest in coin collecting spurred by the state quarters initiative.

But Americans’ antipathy to $1 coins has proved insurmountable — something the Federal Reserve hinted at in a report to Congress in 2007, the program’s first year.

“As of December 31, 2006, Reserve Banks held about $70 million in dollar coins, or enough inventory to meet current transactional demand for about 12 months,” reads the report, an annual requirement under the law that established the program.

“In addition, the United States Mint held inventory of about $110 million Sacagawea dollar coins. Together, these inventories of dollar coins would have met demand for approximately two-and-a-half years.”

The news release issued in December to announce the program’s suspension noted that the $1.4 billion in coins now sitting on the shelves is “enough to meet demand for at least the next 18 years.”

According to the latest program report, issued last June, the Federal Reserve System had to spend about $650,000 to boost its storage capacity to accommodate the surplus, “with no perceptible benefit to the taxpayer.”

COINS Act

U.S. Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and John McCain, R-Ariz., recently introduced a bill — a companion to one proposed last year in the House — to replace the $1 bill with the $1 coin.

The measure — known as the Currency Optimization, Innovation and National Savings, or COINS, Act — would remove from circulation all $1 coins produced before 1999; direct the Federal Reserve to “undertake efforts to improve the circulation” of the coin; and phase out the $1 note.

Harkin and McCain have cited a March 2011 Government Accountability Office report that says replacing the note with the coin could save taxpayers $5.5 billion over 30 years. But the report says the savings stem solely from seigniorage, which is the difference between production costs and face value.

In a response to the report, Louise Roseman, a Federal Reserve official, says that if seigniorage is discounted — and she believes it should be — the GAO analysis actually shows that the transition could cost taxpayers as much as $3.4 billion.

The Harkin-McCain bill, S. 2049 — along with its companion, H.R. 2977 — await committee action.

Online: www.usmint.gov.

The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com