The USPS is struggling. Could postal banking save it?

Every American needs the United States Postal Service. Bills are a universal fact of life, and pay stubs too, even though modern technology means some workplaces can deposit their employees’ checks electronically. Still, 66% of adults in the U.S. use prescription drugs, and 20% of adults over 40 receive their medications through the mail. For these reasons and so many others, Americans love the USPS, and have made it a central rallying cry of the election after a summer spent watching it be hobbled at every turn.

Republicans have dumped resources into hamstringing the USPS since at least the 1990s, bent on privatizing the agency and getting their mitts on the public till. Given the Postal Service’s popularity, not to mention laws forbidding any persons other than USPS personnel from touching your mailbox, the conservative drive to undermine mail delivery makes no sense; people need mail, and in many U.S. towns, as well as far-flung rural areas, only the Postal Service can deliver it. Nevertheless, the Republican Party insists on passing laws to make this mission harder, most infamously 2006’s Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), a bill that famously tanked the Postal Service’s finances.

But the Postal Service’s value exceeds envelopes and packages. In many communities in the U.S., post offices fulfill crucial roles, including providing financial services for underserved communities. If the USPS is allowed to atrophy, thousands of people will lose much more than just mail.

Once upon a time — 110 years ago, to be specific — Congress set up the Postal Savings System, a law written to give Americans options for banking other than untrustworthy banks, to attract immigrants more comfortable with saving at post offices because that’s how they banked in their home countries, and to increase convenience. This system stayed in place for roughly half a century, until deposits dropped and the government responded by phasing the system out in the 1960s.

“Every other developed country in the world has postal banking.”

But fragments of the bygone USPS banking system remain intact. People can still walk into their local post office and purchase a money order or conduct certain wire transfers. They can also cash checks from the U.S. Treasury, which can include social security checks or tax refunds — all crucial tools for financial health for people who are unbanked or underbanked.

And now, there’s renewed energy to bring back postal banking in full force.

“Every other developed country in the world has postal banking,” the Campaign for Postal Banking says. “Postal banking isn’t a new idea,” notes California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna’s Facebook page. “It’s worked before in America and expanded access to basic banking services.” New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D), in collaboration with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), put forth the Postal Banking Act in April of this year, highlighting postal banking’s positive impact on the government deficit during the Great Depression. The contemporary push for postal banking is gaining steam for two chief reasons: to save the USPS, and to help people living in urban and rural communities who lack easy access to banks.

Political activist and journalist Victoria Brownworth lives in one such community where the post office doubles as a financial institution. Her Philadelphia neighborhood is populated with shops and hoagie and pizza restaurants, plus check-cashing places “where people get payday loans, which generally speaking begin at 200% interest,” she tells Mic. Once a person falls into that abyss of debt, they can’t get out of it; they’re perpetually borrowing against their next paycheck. This is where the post office comes in. “You pay your bills, you get money orders,” Brownworth explains. “If you don’t have a fixed address, you have a post office box, and all of those things are central to a poor neighborhood.”

“The post office…