There’s an awful lot of news that is more attention-grabbing than this, but it should really be pointed out that it looks like President Biden could have another scandal on his hands. ParticularlyIf Republicans are able to regain Congress next year, it will be as anticipated.
The U.S. appears to have violated federal law by trying to get the Postal Service into check-cashing business. Postal Service, under Biden’s Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, violated federal law by trying to get the Postal Service into the check-cashing business. For years, it’s been something the postal workers union and progressive activists have long desired. House Republicans on the Financial Services Committee recently called DeJoy out for the scheme in an April 20 letter.
The U.S. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS), launched a pilot program to cash checks. The pilot program—which allows customers to cash payroll and business checks up to $500—was launched in September 2021 without approval from Congress or the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). It violated the long-standing USPS prohibitions against developing or offering new non-postal products. The program was extremely popular over four months. It’s not clear why the program was extended and what reason.
As of its launch, the program violated a statutory restriction on offering or developing new products outside the scope of USPS’s traditional postal services. USPS is in direct violation of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (2022), which was signed into Law on April 6, 2022. The law specifically forbids taxpayer funding for programs that do not relate to financial services.
It appears the program has been extended because the postal-workers union has been lobbying DeJoy personally – while also continuing to attack him on other issues – to create the program and expand it.
The Far-left Outlet Daily Prospect reported on the postal banking plan and the union’s work in pushing DeJoy to create it.
Few would have named DeJoy as the official who would set in motion the most consequential executive action of President Biden’s first term. Even fewer people would have predicted that he would work with the APWU (one of his most antagonistic groups). For many years the union has focused its efforts on getting postal leaders to embrace banking. It sees it as an attractive product for customers to promote financial inclusion.
In 2016, the APWU successfully negotiated postal banking pilots in its USPS collective-bargaining agreement. Megan Brennan was the former postmaster general and she resisted taking on pilots. The APWU thought about filing a grievance but decided against it.
DeJoy instead was engaged personally by the union to participate in meetings and pitch the postal bank idea. DeJoy soon took an interest in these meetings, and they became weekly events that included technical staff.
DeJoy appears to have been guilty of much more than setting up an unlicensed bank at the post office.
Here’s some proof to show that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was a millionaire while supervising the USPS. Are we surprised? Because we’re not. This has been his practice since the beginning. https://t.co/yTKNMmpw0M
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) April 21, 2022
Louis DeJoy traded more than a million dollars in stocks and options in December—and as much as $2.5 million, according to a financial disclosure obtained by CREW. He traded with major companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi and Conagra. His trading was primarily focused on pharmaceutical firms such as Gilead, Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb.
It involves the conversion of Post Offices to check-cashing facilities. The new service allows people to cash paychecks at four different post offices in the United States (Washington, D.C., Falls Church Virginia, Baltimore, Maryland, the Bronx), and then use the money to purchase single-use Visa gift card cards. However, it appears that the program has been an abject failure, making DeJoy’s decision to renew it even stranger.
According to the House Republican letter, the program generated a whopping $35.70 in revenue for the struggling Postal Service – cashing only six paychecks. DeJoy installed a program that only cashed six paychecks, and produced less than $50 of total revenue. Lawmakers weren’t sure why.
Private firms, including Walmart, already offer low-fee check cashing services so it remains a mystery as to why – aside from a sop to the postal-workers union – the Postal Service would even try to get into this kind of business.
“The fact that only six people used the postal banking pilot,” House Republicans noted in their letter, “confirms that consumers remain supportive of the free market and look to private firms for technological solutions to meet their banking needs.”
DeJoy may be the sole remaining Trump loyalist in government and his failed union-backed scheme to turn Post Offices into banks appears to be right out of the Biden playbook – questionably legal and bankrupt.
If Republicans win the 2016 election, they must drive the last nail into its coffin.