A penny made is a penny lost?

The decline of the dollar's worth is alarming enough. Must we also pay more for a penny than it costs to make one?

As The Associated Press reported this week, steep boosts in the prices of copper, zinc and nickel have moved some federal lawmakers to propose a return of steel as the primary component of U.S. pennies and maybe even nickels, as it was during World War II. Since 2003, the prices of copper and nickel have roughly tripled, and the price of zinc has roughly quadrupled. Those jumps have raised the manufacturing price of a penny in its present form (97.5 percent zinc, 2.5 percent copper) to 1.26 cents and of a nickel (75 percent copper, 25 percent nickel) to 7.7 cents.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the U.S. Mint, said those differentials cost taxpayers an extra $100 million last year.

While that might sound like chump change in a federal budget of about $3 trillion, it's still a bad deal that seems likely to get worse. The House, recognizing that needless waste, unanimously passed a bill Thursday to make the cost-saving switch to steel.

However, according to the AP, that legislation faces significant opposition not just in the Senate but from U.S. Treasury officials who dispute Congress' authority to mandate such a change.

At least a dime still costs only a little more than 4 cents to make, and a quarter a little less than 10 cents — rare bargains on the vast scale of government spending.