The Gold Money Bill: what New Hampshire's HB 1342 proposed

In 2004 a New Hampshire House bill tried to bring gold and silver coin back into everyday dealings with the state. Campaigners called it the Gold Money Bill. This page sums up what the record shows, and explains how a domain with that name now hosts an invoice generator.

The bill as introduced

House Bill 1342 was filed for the 2003 to 2004 session under the title "establishing a new system of coinage for the state". Its prime sponsor was Representative Henry McElroy, joined by Representatives Paul Ingbretson and Daniel Itse. The text as introduced had the state mint one-ounce gold and silver coins with a combined face amount of $50 million, and declared them legal money for debts within New Hampshire. The state Treasury told the legislature it could not determine what the plan would cost.

The Vieira rewrite

The version that drew attention was a different text. Representative McElroy put forward a floor amendment that replaced the whole bill with a new chapter, "Gold and Silver Coin". Commentator James Turk wrote in February 2004 that the bill was drafted by the constitutional lawyer Edwin Vieira Jr., author of the book Pieces of Eight. Turk himself took part in a press conference at the state capitol in Concord to back it. The amendment rested on Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution, which says that no state may make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.

In practical terms the amendment would have:

set up a central state depositary in Concord and a local one in each county, to hold and move coin;
required the state treasurer to certify, at the start, midpoint and end of every business day, the rate at which listed US silver and gold coins exchange against ordinary US legal tender;
limited "silver and gold coin" to specific US coins, such as silver dollars, half dollars, quarters and dimes, and American Eagle silver and gold coins.

Turk described the idea as a choice for people who deal with the state. They could keep using dollars, or ask to pay and be paid in coin, valued by metal weight at the market rate and not by the face value stamped on the coin.

How it ended

The House Commerce Committee heard the bill on 20 January 2004 and recommended "inexpedient to legislate" by a vote of 11 to 1. The committee report, written by Representative Leo Fraser, said the bill would promote gold as an alternative currency and that the committee had trouble believing gold, which can also lose value, would be of any benefit as a currency. The official bill record lists the House status as inexpedient to legislate, dated 5 February 2004. It shows no Senate action and no chapter number, so the bill never became law.

The campaign did not stop there. Its own pages said that a revised bill, titled "Gold and Silver Coin and Electronic Currency", was filed on 4 October 2004 for the 2004 to 2005 session. They described it as voluntary for residents and businesses, with one tax made mandatory to keep the state's gold account supplied. We have not confirmed a bill number or an outcome for that revision, so we do not report one.

The wider idea

Backers of legal tender laws for gold and silver argue that states keep a constitutional power over what they accept in payment. Critics, including the committee above, doubt that coin would be practical or useful in modern public finance. This page takes no side. It only records that the question kept returning in New Hampshire. Later bills carried titles such as "allowing gold and silver as lawful mediums of exchange" (HB 642, 2015), the "legal tender act" (HB 1674, 2024) and the "New Hampshire Legal Tender Act" (HB 721, 2025).

From a campaign site to an invoice tool

The domain goldmoneybill.org carried the campaign's pages from 2004, covering the bill text, a list of frequently asked questions and reading suggestions. Around 2018 the old site stopped working, and later years show only placeholder pages. The word "bill" in the name meant a proposed law. It is now an invoice maker, where a bill is a request for payment.

Today the domain hosts a free invoice generator that runs in your browser. It has no connection to the campaign and takes no position on monetary policy. Old campaign addresses, such as the bill text and its PDF and Word copies, now point to this page so that older links still lead somewhere that explains the name. If you came to make an invoice, try the templates or read how to make an invoice.