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According to a white paper released last week by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), USPS is now considering expanding its services to banking in a last ditch effort to raise revenue. This announcement follows close on the heels of the USPS’s recent illogical efforts to expand services into grocery delivery.

For years the Postal Service’s finances have been in dire straights. The USPS reported second quarter losses this year of $1.5 billion marking the 24th quarter out of the past 26 they have posted massive revenue losses. They have additionally posted multi-billion dollar losses the last 8 years, signaling an inherent inability to efficiently manage the finances of the primary service it is charged with – delivering the mail.

Logically, one would think choosing to expand services to banking and grocery delivery could be a financial nail in the coffin given the USPS’s inability to keep their core mail delivery service out of the red. However the bureaucratic mindset seldom finds itself in the company of logic.

Thus instead of working to increase financial efficiency and decrease waste in existing services, the Postal Service is proposing to gamble taxpayer dollars away on revenue schemes well outside the purview of delivering mail.

For instance in the recently released white paper titled The Road Ahead for Postal Financial Services, the OIG suggests possibly expanding services to handing out loans, check cashing and even creating its own “full-fledged post bank.”

The USPS has also started beta testing a grocery delivery service in San Francisco meaning they are now competing against actual hard working entrepreneurs and businesses. However, unlike their competitors USPS is not susceptible to free market forces thanks to government backing, essentially making them “too bureaucratic to fail.”  

Not only do such practices disrupt the market and disregard the basic free market principles America was founded on but will also leave taxpayers holding the bag for the Postal Service’s future failures. 

Until lawmakers take action to reign in and reform the financial recklessness with which the USPS operates taxpayers can only expect billions more of their hard earned dollars to be wasted.