Letter to the Editor: Postal bank could help poor afford safe accounts

In 2006, Congress required the Postal Service to fully pre-fund 75 years of retiree health care benefits in 10 years. No one else has this burden; I know of no private businesses that do this. Unsurprisingly, the Post Office has difficulty finding the required $5.5 billion a year.

One way to help the Post Office is to allow it to offer banking services the way it did until 1967. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposes “postal banking” to help the finances of the USPS and to help about 68 million low-income people find affordable banking services.

Today, about 28 percent of U.S. households are too poor to be served by banks, so they use payday lenders and check-cashing places that charge outrageous rates for their services.

A “postal bank” would save these families thousands of dollars a year and provide a new revenue stream for the USPS at rates far less than the 10 percent of their income that the poor now pay to payday loan and check-cashing businesses.

Our Postal Service can offer postal banking. It has before. If the more than 30,000 postal branches were allowed to provide affordable, non-profit, consumer-driven financial services like paycheck cashing, debit cards, bill payments, savings accounts and small-dollar loans, it would be a win-win for the U.S. Postal Service and the millions of Americans who live in “bank deserts,” areas without access to affordable financial services.

The Post Office does NOT use tax dollars to operate. Its money comes from sales of postage, postal money orders and other services.

Contact your members of Congress and demand that they let the Postal Service provide banking services to help the poor and to earn a new income stream to meet the burden Congress put on the Post Office.

Duane Pitts

Moses Lake