Could Banking Offer Them A Way Out? Roughly 40% Of Post Offices Operate In The Red

President Biden says America is not a racist country, but that Black Americans have been left behind and “we have to deal with it.”

In an interview on NBC’s Today show that aired Friday, Biden was asked about the remarks Wednesday by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who delivered the Republican response to the president’s address to a joint session of Congress.

President Biden, GOP’s Tim Scott Offer Diverging Views Of Race In America
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President Biden’s Address To Congress, Annotated
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President Biden’s Address To Congress, Annotated
Sen. Tim Scott’s Republican Response To Biden’s Address, Annotated
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Sen. Tim Scott’s Republican Response To Biden’s Address, Annotated
Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican, said that “America is not a racist country” and warned that “it’s wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.”

Biden and Scott have divergent views on race in America, but the president agreed with the senator — to a point.

“I don’t think the American people are racist,” he said, “but I think after 400 years, African Americans have been left in a position where they are so far behind the eight ball in terms of education and health, in terms of opportunity.”

Biden continued, “I don’t think America is racist, but I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow and before that, slavery, have had a cost and we have to deal with it.”

Biden was also asked in the interview about the situation at the Southern border. He said that the number of children seeking to cross into the country “is way down now, we’ve now gotten control” and that there’s “a significant change in the circumstance for children coming to and at the border.”

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According to Customs and Border Protection, nearly 19,000 children and teenagers arrived at the Southern border in March — the most ever in a single month. Biden, however, refused to label the situation a crisis.

Biden defended his administration’s efforts to reunite children separated from their families by the Trump administration. “One of the things is we don’t know yet where those kids are. We’re trying like hell to figure out what happened. It’s almost like being a sleuth, and we’re still continuing to try like hell to find out where they are,” he said.

Some 42% of the nation’s post offices were underwater in 2019, not generating enough revenue to cover their expenses, according to a report released last month by the U.S. Postal Service inspector general. Half of those that didn’t cover their costs are within 5 miles of another post office.

So, are there too many post offices?

“The short answer is no,” says Paul Steidler, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Lexington Institute who studies the U.S. Postal Service. He says the agency looked at the issue a decade ago.

“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. And frankly, there was a firestorm of bipartisan, intense congressional opposition to this.”

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One reason for the bipartisan backlash is because rural post offices tend to be situated in red state America.

Rather than shutter offices, the Postal Service settled instead for service cutbacks, according to James O’Rourke, a professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

“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,” O’Rourke says.

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 at its disposal.

There is a congressional subsidy available for rural post offices of $460 million per year, but the inspector general report says the agency hasn’t requested the reimbursement since fiscal year 1982. The Postal Service told the inspector general it does not request the subsidy because it prefers to be financially self-sufficient, and that even if it did, the amount would not be enough to cover the cost of providing service to rural customers.

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The search for new lines of revenue

Experts say there are other services it could be providing, such as selling hunting and fishing licenses, leasing parts of its buildings, or O’Rourke says, getting into banking.

“Access to safe and affordable financial services I think is vital, particularly among low-income families,” he says. “It’s something the Postal Service could do very easily. They’ve got the locations. They have clerks that are trained in accepting and managing money, and they have a focus on customer service.”

The Postal Service already sells money orders, and a group of Democrats in Congress has proposed expanding this service through a pilot project to provide low-cost check cashing and fee-free ATMs at six rural and six urban post offices.

At a recent news conference, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., celebrated the work of the Postal Service and spoke about a plan to find new sources of income.

“The Postal Service is awesome. We love the Postal Service, Americans love the Postal Service, they want to protect the Postal Service, they want to expand the Postal Service.”

The proposal, Ocasio-Cortez says, would raise more than $1 billion for the Postal Service, “so everyone from our babies to our seniors can continue to enjoy the services that they provide.”

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It’s not clear how much support the Democratic plan has in Congress. The Lexington Institute’s Steidler says he thinks the proposal is ill-advised but says post offices have a value beyond their profit margins.

Post offices, he says, “especially in rural areas, tend to be a part of the town’s identity” and “part of the town’s history.” He says many are old and “have very iconic and, you know, beautiful architecture. So there’s a value there beyond, how much they make or don’t make.”

The Postal Service is also a crucial lifeline for many people in rural America. Mail carriers often deliver packages the last mile for other shippers, along with prescriptions. In many rural areas, post offices can also serve as a town gathering place.

In response to the inspector general’s report, the Postal Service says current law forbids it from closing small post offices just because they’re operating at a deficit, although the agency’s recently released 10-year plan says it might propose consolidating a small number of post office branches in urban areas.

Could Banking Offer Them A Way Out? Roughly 40% Of Post Offices Operate In The Red

Could Banking Offer Them A Way Out? Roughly 40% Of Post Offices Operate In The Red

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Zaraki Kenpachi

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