Virginia is apparently for haters of the Federal Reserve: One state legislator wants the state to mint its own coins in case the US dollar collapses. It may sound pie-in-the-sky, but Virginia’s House of Delegates agreed yesterday to set up a $17,000 panel to explore the move, reports the Washington Post. The Virginian-Pilotsees the measure by Republican Bob Marshall as a “conservative shout-out,” but Marshall insists he’s serious.
“We can’t mint money, but we can mint gold and silver coins,” he explained previously, reports NBC News. “It sounds like a small difference, but it is a difference legally. If you look closely on a [dollar] bill, it doesn’t say that it’s money. It says it is legal tender ‘for all debts, public and private.’” What’s more, Virginia isn’t alone in considering the notes, reports CNN. Here’s the nitty-gritty of Marshall’s bill.
This bill has precisely nothing to do with Virginia minting her own coins. What may come out of it is an alternative currency, under Virginia’s reserved constitutional power to make gold and silver coins a tender in payment of debts, in Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution. For what it is worth, a State’s power to select her own alternative currency for her own governmental purposes has already been upheld twice by the United States Supreme Court.