![]() ![]() And this bill does just that, raising over a billion dollars in revenue for our Postal Services so that our - from everyone from our babies to our seniors can continue to enjoy the services that they provide. Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York spoke at a Capitol Hill news conference.ĪLEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: The Postal Service is awesome (laughter). NAYLOR: A group of Democrats in Congress has proposed just that, a pilot project to provide low-cost checking and savings accounts, ATMs, even small loans at post offices. And they have a focus on customer service. They have clerks that are trained in accepting and managing money. It's something the Postal Service could do very easily. O'ROURKE: Access to safe and affordable financial services, I think, is vital, particularly among low-income families. ![]() And there are other services it could be providing, like selling hunting and fishing licenses, leasing part of their buildings or, O'Rourke says, getting into banking. There's a congressional subsidy for rural post offices, which the Postal Service has never used. NAYLOR: But the inspector general's report says the Postal Service hasn't taken any further steps to make more money at its retail operations but does have several options. JAMES O'ROURKE: What they did was leave them open and reduce operating hours to about six hours, in some cases, four and even as few as two hours at some post offices. He says the Postal Service settled for service cutbacks. James O'Rourke is a professor at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. NAYLOR: It's a bipartisan issue because the rural post offices tend to be in red state America. And frankly, there was a firestorm of bipartisan, intense congressional opposition to this. STEIDLER: Patrick Donahoe, the postmaster general at the time, proposed closing 3,700 post offices, about 12% of the number that are in the country today. He says the agency looked at this issue a decade ago. NAYLOR: That's Paul Steidler of the right-leaning Lexington Institute and who studies the U.S. Half of those that didn't cover their costs are within five miles of another post office. Here's NPR's Brian Naylor.īRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: Some 42% of the nation's post offices were underwater in 2019, not generating enough revenue to cover their expenses, according to the Postal Service's inspector general. ![]() But in many places, especially in rural areas, that's just not enough to cover their costs. There are more than 31,000 post offices in this country. ![]()
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