Pawn Mount Rushmore: The Newest Ridiculous Deficit Reduction Idea

The platinum coin idea is pretty much defunct, but another ridiculous deficit solution has taken its place: Pawning Mount Rushmore to the Federal Reserve.

A petition filed with the “We The People” White House website asks the government to pawn Mount Rushmore to the Federal Reserve in order to help the Treasury Department pay the interest on the country’s deficit.

“The government needs a backup plan to pay the interest on our debt if we go past the debt ceiling and prioritization fails. Now that #MintTheCoin is dead, our best option is clearly to sell Mount Rushmore to the Fed, and buy it back later once our cash flow problem is solved.”

According to MSN, the idea to pawn Mount Rushmore is as ridiculous as it sounds. The project began in 1927 and took 14 years to build, costing $1 million. An obvious tourism ploy by the government, Mount Rushmore paid off, with over 3 million visitors each year.

The National Park Service reports that South Dakota’s sex national parks, of which Rushmore is the biggest, contributed $168 million in economic benefit in 2010.

The petition probably won’t go anywhere, and only has about 10 signatures as of this writing (you need 25,000 just to get a response). But social media is embracing the idea, with #PawnTheMountain trending on Twitter. It isn’t clear who started the petition, but some believe the idea may have come from Jordan Weissman, a business writer for The Atlantic. He suggested it on Twitter as a way to avoid default on our national debt.

The proposal is obviously going nowhere. Only seven signatures had been collected by the petition Monday night, and 25,000 are needed by Feb. 13.

What do you think? Should the fed seriously consider pawning Mount Rushmore to the Federal Reserve in order to cover our debts?