- The US Postal Service (USPS) is facing financial difficulties and may go broke without financial help.
- The USPS has a rich history and provides valuable services, including delivering mail and packages.
- Postal workers are at risk during the pandemic, with over a thousand testing positive for COVID-19 and over 40 dying.
- The USPS is self-funded but has been burdened by a 2006 law that required prepayment of retiree healthcare benefits and limited its flexibility to raise money.
- Privatization of the USPS has been suggested, but it would lead to higher costs for customers and potentially cut off service to remote areas.
- The USPS is essential for many Americans, delivering prescriptions and serving as a lifeline for rural communities.

- Privatization of the USPS could impact small businesses that rely on its services, such as a rock engraving company in rural Kansas.
- Companies like FedEx, UPS, and Amazon also rely on the USPS for package delivery, especially in rural areas.
- President Trump opposes giving federal assistance to the USPS, potentially due to his relationship with Amazon and Jeff Bezos.
- Trump's appointment of Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General raises concerns about his influence over the USPS.
- The USPS faces limitations in pricing and services due to the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006.
- Experts suggest that the USPS could expand its services to include hunting and fishing licenses or offer basic financial services like postal banking.
- The USPS needs immediate funding and Congress should reconsider the terms of the 2006 law.
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has partnered with Stamps.com to produce stamps supporting the USPS, available for purchase.

As the U.S. Postal Service faces financial catastrophe, John Oliver discusses why the service is so important, what brought it to this point, and what we can do to help.

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♪♪ Our main story tonight concerns the U.S.

Postal Service, the organization that would have delivered your Mother's Day card for today if you hadn't forgotten to mail 1 like an ungrateful sack of shit.

The USPS provides valuable services from delivering mail and packages to brilliantly ruining TikTok videos.

All of that for my ma Party girl ♪ ♪ She just want her phone too They say you ain't wifey type ♪ ♪ But I don't care I want...

From the wave, to the laugh, to the how you're doing, every single part of that is great.

I want that woman to interrupt every TikTok video.

In fact, take this 1 of an orange cat involved in an interspecies orgy.

Keep crashing TikToks, you national fucking treasure.

The Postal service has a rich and storied history.

It actually predates the founding of this country, and it has an obligation to bring mail to every single household, even transporting it to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by mule.

Over the years, Americans have relied on it for a surprisingly wide variety of needs.

Country children often watch for the mailman.

Baby chicks don't have to eat or drink for a whole day after they're hatched, so they can travel safely through the mail.

You used to be able to send live baby chicks through the mail, and guess what?

The Postal Service will transport all kinds of live poultry for you, including chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys.

Which actually raises the question, why the fuck would I ever send a greeting card again when I could mail someone a birthday turkey, or a thank you duck, or a sympathy goose?

I mean, sure, your nana's dead, but now you have a small goose, which is, and this is true, better.

But the current pandemic is obviously making things very difficult for postal workers right now, as you probably know from seeing stories like these.

I mean, to the point that I worry about coming to work every day.

I don't want to contract it to bring it back to my family.

Do you feel like you're at risk every time you go to work?

I can't say that it's not on the back of everybody's mind.

There is a joke amongst the office, are we essential or sacrificial?

Most office humor is just on the level of working hard or hardly working, or someone's microwaving fish again, not, will any of us die today, LMFAO.

Over a thousand postal workers have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 40 have died.

But both in addition to and because of the ongoing pandemic, these workers are also having to grapple with another existential threat.

The Postal Service may be about to go broke.

The outgoing Postmaster General recently asked Congress for a total of 89 billion dollars.

And without financial help, the USPS may not make it past September without significant service interruptions, which is upsetting, especially during an election year, a census year, and a pandemic that has people housebound.

And I know, people do love to complain about the post office, but the truth is, it does very important work, and many people really rely on it.

Not just to receive packages, but in rural areas in particular, a post office can be a community hub that brings people together.

Just listen to this postmaster in rural Colorado tell a heartwarming story with a bit of a twist.

Postmaster Berger says neighbors who live far apart run into each other at the post office.

That's how everybody keeps in touch, including him.

It's provided me the opportunity to know these people in this town more than I ever thought I would know.

Even to the degree where Sometimes on my lunch hour, I find myself helping a neighbor bury his dog.

And third, just to circle back, the fuck?

Also, you just said, sometimes you help bury a dog.

That's plural, meaning you've done it more than once.

And helping someone do that once is a courtesy, but when it starts becoming a regular thing, you have to wonder why the neighborhood dogs keep dying and why you're always there.

The point is, at the worst possible time, this American institution is on the brink of collapse.

So tonight, we thought it might be worth asking why that is and what can be done about it.

And let's start with the fact that despite being part of the federal government, the Postal Service is actually a self-funded entity.

It operates independently and is meant to pay for itself with the money that it makes from services and postage.

That might help explain why over the years, it's often tried to encourage stamp collecting with commercials like this.

They're stuck on stamp It's fun to do ♪ Either by yourself or with your crew Now, red star animals are on the scene Stegosaurus, rhinosaurus, look real mean

And also, kudos on featuring all the stamps that kids love.

From those slamming dino stamps, to the dank get well stamp with irises, to my personal favorite, the 1 that simply says, lace making.

And I think I speak for cool kids everywhere, and I say, there's simply nothing doper than a totally bitchin' lace stamp.

And you might think that you know why the postal service is in so much trouble, that the internet and email mean that people just don't use it as much.

In fact, experts believe it would still be turning a profit were it not for a 2006 law called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.

Now, 1 of the things that it required was for the USPS to prepay health care benefits for retirees on a 50-year schedule, starting with an aggressive obligation to set aside over 5000000000 dollars a year for 10 years.

That, in itself, was a massive burden to put on the Postal Service.

But, the law also limited its flexibility to raise money by putting price caps on major products like first-class mail.

So, they had massive new obligations to meet, even as their income was basically locked in place.

Now, in hindsight, it seems like a pretty clear death sentence, which is what makes it so strange that it passed largely unnoticed at the time and with bipartisan support.

And the effect was almost immediate because the Postal Service went from reporting a net income of $900 million in 2006 to a loss of 3.8 billion just 3 years later.

And good luck selling enough dope-ass lace stamps to get yourself out of that hole.

So the truth is, the Postal Service's problems aren't entirely from the fact that we started using email, or even the 2008 recession.

In fact, it's been estimated that the stipulations of this 1 law have accounted for approximately 74 percent of their net losses since it passed.

And that is despite them shedding over 100,000 jobs.

And the fact they were so badly hobbled by an act of Congress makes it a little infuriating that some, like former Fox News commentator John Stossel, hold it up as a sign that government agencies are just naturally bloated and incompetent.

Government can run the post office like a business.

But real businesses can't lose billions every year.

FedEx, UPS, and others make billions because they innovate and cut costs.

Okay, there's a lot wrong with that, but he is right that FedEx is pretty good at innovating.

For example, you've probably seen the arrow hidden in the FedEx logo, but did you know that for years, there also used to be a swastika hidden in the D?

Once you see it, like the arrow, you can't unsee it.

But they took it out because businesses have to innovate.

Now, what Stossel is advocating for there, and what many conservatives would prefer, is for the postal service to be privatized.

But there are some huge drawbacks to that idea.

For starters, as you may have noticed, FedEx and UPS charge a fuck of a lot more to deliver than the postal service does.

Also, those remote addresses that they are obligated to deliver to aren't just difficult to get to, they're not profitable.

And in all likelihood, companies would cut those routes off, meaning a lot of people would lose access.

And to his credit, John Stussel fully acknowledges that, although basically says in response, tough shit.

The Constitution says Congress has the power to establish post offices.

It doesn't have to, and it doesn't have to deliver mail to all of America.

Who says there needs to be universal service?

If I live way out in the boondocks, I can get email.

Now, it's hard to decide what I like least about that, his dismissive attitude towards rural Americans, the incorrect assumption that email is a decent substitute for the postal service, conveniently glossing over the fact that an estimated 42 million people lack access to broadband internet, or the unfortunate fact that John Stossel looks like what would happen if someone tried to queer-eye Geraldo Rivera, but it didn't really work.

And again, The Postal Service is a literal lifeline for many Americans.

It reportedly delivered 1.2 billion prescriptions last year, including close to 100 percent of prescriptions from the VA.

And while you might be able to buy medicine online, you can't actually download medicine from the internet.

To clarify, you can download the medicine, Jeremy Renner's collection of music-like noises from the internet, but, and this is very important, you shouldn't do that.

And then there's the potential business impacts of privatization.

Small businesses would immediately be affected if service was reduced, like this rock engraving company in rural Kansas.

Fisher Rock is another company that uses the local post office to ship some of their smaller products.

Just about every day, we mail out something.

I hate to see them lose our post office in home city.

It's handy for businesses like myself just to run in there and get postage and...

Yeah, it would be a real shame if that business couldn't mail out its rocks.

Like this 1 that says, real women heart little wieners, or this 1 that says, the grass is greener under my wiener.

I mean, that's a perfect rock right there.

If the Postal Service stopped delivering gut busters like that, it would be a fucking tragedy.

Although, not for me to be honest, since I already bought mine, and I've got to say, it's definitely funnier in person.

1 of the funniest things about it is how genuinely heavy this is.

And look, it's not just small businesses.

Companies like FedEx and UPS often hand off their packages to the postal service for the last leg of the delivery, especially in rural areas.

Amazon also contracts many of its deliveries out to it.

And that, weirdly enough, brings us to 1 of the biggest things standing in the way of the USPS getting the federal assistance it so badly needs right now, because this guy has strongly opposed giving it sufficient aid.

And many believe that's because of its relationship with Amazon, owned of course by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, whose political coverage is hated by the president, who, as we know, makes policy decisions based on his never-ending game of 6 degrees of how is this about me?

Just watch him try and explain why the Postal Service should not get federal help.

The Postal Service is a joke because they're handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies and every time they bring a package they lose money on it.

A post office should raise the price of a package by approximately 4 times, because they don't raise them.

For some reason, these people have been in there a long time, but for some reason, they're very cozy with some of these companies.

And they don't raise the price of a package.

Okay, first, the Postal Service is not a joke.

It delivers jokes, yes, and they are, as we know, absolutely hilarious, but it's not in itself a joke.

But second, if the Postal Service quadruples prices on companies, those package delivery costs will almost certainly be passed on to the consumer, because their companies, they don't give a shit.

And third, it isn't cutting sweetheart deals to lose money on every delivery, because in addition to everything else we've already discussed, that 2006 law made it illegal for the USPS to price parcel delivery below its cost.

So in summation here, Trump is absolutely convinced that the Postal Service's biggest problem is 1 of the few things that is not actually 1 of its problems.

And that's not just annoying, it's really worrying.

Especially as just this week, he replaced the outgoing Postmaster General with this guy, Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor.

And that appointment has worried many, many people that Trump may now be able to bend the Postal Service to his will, presumably, meaning that by next year, every stamp in America will feature 1 of Jeff Bezos' dick pics.

And the thing is, there are absolutely solutions that would enable the Postal Service to help themselves, but for all the reasons that we've discussed, their hands are tied when it comes to pricing on their main product.

Which may actually help explain some of their very weird side hustles.

For instance, you can go on their website and buy this costume for your dog, which is a great way to make your dog look like it's performing a postal-themed rendition of Dick in a Box.

Also, a few years back, they entered into a bizarre partnership with Forever 21 to unveil a postal service themed fashion line.

Although, as this YouTuber will tell you, there were a few issues with their garments.

Overall, I'm gonna give it a 3 and a half out of 10.

When you're wearing nothing but the word priority stretched over your chest, it's a little weird to realize that the answer to the question, why is any of this happening, is at least in part, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006.

But look, branching out into fashion clearly won't save the postal service.

That is why it is so important that they're given much more flexibility, not just on pricing, but also on the types of services they can offer.

Now, experts suggest that the post offices could expand their services to issue things like hunting and fishing licenses.

And perhaps the best option is something called postal banking, where the post office doesn't so much act as a bank, as provide some very basic financial services, like savings accounts and check cashing.

That wouldn't just generate revenue, it could also help the estimated 25 percent of people in this country living in unbanked or underbanked communities, who are often forced to turn to alternative financial services like payday lenders, which can charge up to 400 percent in fees and interest.

And this wouldn't be completely out of the postal services lane.

Not only do they already provide some services like selling money, orders, money transfers, and prepaid cards.

But up until the 1960s, they were already doing it.

Though 90 percent of its income is derived from the sale of stamps, the post office is also the largest savings bank in the country and the largest agency for the transfer of money.

It takes in more than 1 and a half billion dollars annually.

You know, it's depressing that the weirdest thing about watching old-timey clips now isn't that they're in black and white or that people are wearing hats.

It's that everyone is standing next to each other in a public place with no fear of dying.

Honestly, at this point, I have such severe quarantine brain, I could wake up in the Jurassic period and my first thought would be, holy shit, those stegosauruses are standing way too close together.

But look, postal banking is clearly more of a long-term solution.

It won't get the USPS out of its current mess.

What they badly need is an infusion of funding as soon as possible.

And not only should we be demanding that they get that, Congress should also take a look at undoing some of the more onerous terms in that 2006 law.

And until then, there might actually be something small that we can do here.

Because the purchase of stamps is still a key revenue generator for them, and you can actually get stamps made.

American Idol sold stamps, and Veep and Full Frontal recently did giveaways.

And while it will not come close to raising the 90 billion dollars the Postal Service badly needs, We've actually been working with Stamps.com for weeks to not just do a giveaway, but to produce a run of stamps that are available for you to buy right now.

If you go to Stamps.com slash Last Stamp Tonight, you can find postage featuring Chee John, a Bolivian zebra, Mr.

Nutter Butter, and our personal favorite, and now, a stamp.

You can buy sheets of these for the next month, and I would really encourage you to do that.

They are the perfect way to mail a card that supports the USPS in its time of need, while also saying, I like last week tonight, and I'm sorry I forgot Mother's Day, which you did, you piece of shit.

If you like this segment, please, buy a stamp and support the postal service.

If you hated it, buy 1 anyway, and mail me a letter about how much I suck.


Speaker 0: ♪♪ Our main story tonight concerns the U.S. Postal Service, the organization that would have delivered your Mother's Day card for today if you hadn't forgotten to mail 1 like an ungrateful sack of shit. The USPS provides valuable services from delivering mail and packages to brilliantly ruining TikTok videos. ♪

Speaker 1: All of that for my ma Party girl ♪ ♪ She just want her phone too They say you ain't wifey type ♪ ♪ But I don't care I want...

Speaker 0: ♪ -♪

Speaker 1: ...you... How you doing?

Speaker 0: ♪ -♪ How you doing? ♪ That is excellent. From the wave, to the laugh, to the how you're doing, every single part of that is great. I want that woman to interrupt every TikTok video. In fact, take this 1 of an orange cat involved in an interspecies orgy.

♪

Speaker 1: What? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 0: Mm-mm-mm-mm. ♪ Now, already very good, right? Exactly. Hard to improve upon. But watch this.

♪

Speaker 1: What? Oh, yeah. Mm-mm-mm-mm.

Speaker 0: ♪ Yeah. It's just instantly better. That's a cake on a cake right there. Keep crashing TikToks, you national fucking treasure. The Postal service has a rich and storied history.

It actually predates the founding of this country, and it has an obligation to bring mail to every single household, even transporting it to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by mule. Over the years, Americans have relied on it for a surprisingly wide variety of needs.

Speaker 2: Country children often watch for the mailman. Just see what has come today. A big box with many holes in it. The box is full of baby chicks. Baby chicks don't have to eat or drink for a whole day after they're hatched, so they can travel safely through the mail.

Speaker 0: It's true. You used to be able to send live baby chicks through the mail, and guess what? You still can. The Postal Service will transport all kinds of live poultry for you, including chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys. Which actually raises the question, why the fuck would I ever send a greeting card again when I could mail someone a birthday turkey, or a thank you duck, or a sympathy goose?

Who wouldn't want a sympathy goose? I mean, sure, your nana's dead, but now you have a small goose, which is, and this is true, better. But the current pandemic is obviously making things very difficult for postal workers right now, as you probably know from seeing stories like these.

Speaker 1: I am very worried. Very worried. I mean, to the point that I worry about coming to work every day. I don't want to contract it to bring it back to my family. Do you feel like you're at risk every time you go to work?

Speaker 3: Yes. I can't say that it's not on the back of everybody's mind. There is a joke amongst the office, are we essential or sacrificial?

Speaker 0: Holy shit, that is a dark joke. Most office humor is just on the level of working hard or hardly working, or someone's microwaving fish again, not, will any of us die today, LMFAO. And those fears are not misplaced. Over a thousand postal workers have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 40 have died. But both in addition to and because of the ongoing pandemic, these workers are also having to grapple with another existential threat.

The Postal Service may be about to go broke. The outgoing Postmaster General recently asked Congress for a total of 89 billion dollars. And without financial help, the USPS may not make it past September without significant service interruptions, which is upsetting, especially during an election year, a census year, and a pandemic that has people housebound. And I know, people do love to complain about the post office, but the truth is, it does very important work, and many people really rely on it. Not just to receive packages, but in rural areas in particular, a post office can be a community hub that brings people together.

Just listen to this postmaster in rural Colorado tell a heartwarming story with a bit of a twist.

Speaker 4: Postmaster Berger says neighbors who live far apart run into each other at the post office. That's how everybody keeps in touch, including him.

Speaker 5: It's provided me the opportunity to know these people in this town more than I ever thought I would know. Even to the degree where Sometimes on my lunch hour, I find myself helping a neighbor bury his dog.

Speaker 0: Okay. First, what? Second, excuse me? And third, just to circle back, the fuck? Also, you just said, sometimes you help bury a dog.

That's plural, meaning you've done it more than once. And helping someone do that once is a courtesy, but when it starts becoming a regular thing, you have to wonder why the neighborhood dogs keep dying and why you're always there. The point is, at the worst possible time, this American institution is on the brink of collapse. So tonight, we thought it might be worth asking why that is and what can be done about it. And let's start with the fact that despite being part of the federal government, the Postal Service is actually a self-funded entity.

It operates independently and is meant to pay for itself with the money that it makes from services and postage. That might help explain why over the years, it's often tried to encourage stamp collecting with commercials like this. -♪

Speaker 6: Hey, what a kid stuck on OrcStamp

Speaker 0: ♪ ♪

Speaker 6: They're stuck on stamp It's fun to do ♪ Either by yourself or with your crew Now, red star animals are on the scene Stegosaurus, rhinosaurus, look real mean

Speaker 0: ♪ First, that song can get it. And also, kudos on featuring all the stamps that kids love. From those slamming dino stamps, to the dank get well stamp with irises, to my personal favorite, the 1 that simply says, lace making. And I think I speak for cool kids everywhere, and I say, there's simply nothing doper than a totally bitchin' lace stamp. I'm just worried it might be too cool.

And you might think that you know why the postal service is in so much trouble, that the internet and email mean that people just don't use it as much. But that's not actually the main reason. In fact, experts believe it would still be turning a profit were it not for a 2006 law called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. Now, 1 of the things that it required was for the USPS to prepay health care benefits for retirees on a 50-year schedule, starting with an aggressive obligation to set aside over 5000000000 dollars a year for 10 years. That, in itself, was a massive burden to put on the Postal Service.

But, the law also limited its flexibility to raise money by putting price caps on major products like first-class mail. So, they had massive new obligations to meet, even as their income was basically locked in place. Now, in hindsight, it seems like a pretty clear death sentence, which is what makes it so strange that it passed largely unnoticed at the time and with bipartisan support. And the effect was almost immediate because the Postal Service went from reporting a net income of $900 million in 2006 to a loss of 3.8 billion just 3 years later. And good luck selling enough dope-ass lace stamps to get yourself out of that hole.

So the truth is, the Postal Service's problems aren't entirely from the fact that we started using email, or even the 2008 recession. In fact, it's been estimated that the stipulations of this 1 law have accounted for approximately 74 percent of their net losses since it passed. And that is despite them shedding over 100,000 jobs. And the fact they were so badly hobbled by an act of Congress makes it a little infuriating that some, like former Fox News commentator John Stossel, hold it up as a sign that government agencies are just naturally bloated and incompetent.

Speaker 3: Another myth. Government can run the post office like a business. But real businesses can't lose billions every year. 16000000000 last year. FedEx, UPS, and others make billions because they innovate and cut costs.

Speaker 0: Okay, there's a lot wrong with that, but he is right that FedEx is pretty good at innovating. For example, you've probably seen the arrow hidden in the FedEx logo, but did you know that for years, there also used to be a swastika hidden in the D? Yeah. Once you see it, like the arrow, you can't unsee it. But they took it out because businesses have to innovate.

Now, what Stossel is advocating for there, and what many conservatives would prefer, is for the postal service to be privatized. But there are some huge drawbacks to that idea. For starters, as you may have noticed, FedEx and UPS charge a fuck of a lot more to deliver than the postal service does. Also, those remote addresses that they are obligated to deliver to aren't just difficult to get to, they're not profitable. And in all likelihood, companies would cut those routes off, meaning a lot of people would lose access.

And to his credit, John Stussel fully acknowledges that, although basically says in response, tough shit.

Speaker 3: The Constitution says Congress has the power to establish post offices. It doesn't have to, and it doesn't have to deliver mail to all of America. Who says there needs to be universal service? If I live way out in the boondocks, I can get email.

Speaker 0: Now, it's hard to decide what I like least about that, his dismissive attitude towards rural Americans, the incorrect assumption that email is a decent substitute for the postal service, conveniently glossing over the fact that an estimated 42 million people lack access to broadband internet, or the unfortunate fact that John Stossel looks like what would happen if someone tried to queer-eye Geraldo Rivera, but it didn't really work. And again, The Postal Service is a literal lifeline for many Americans. It reportedly delivered 1.2 billion prescriptions last year, including close to 100 percent of prescriptions from the VA. And while you might be able to buy medicine online, you can't actually download medicine from the internet. To clarify, you can download the medicine, Jeremy Renner's collection of music-like noises from the internet, but, and this is very important, you shouldn't do that.

And then there's the potential business impacts of privatization. Small businesses would immediately be affected if service was reduced, like this rock engraving company in rural Kansas.

Speaker 5: Fisher Rock is another company that uses the local post office to ship some of their smaller products.

Speaker 7: Just about every day, we mail out something. I hate to see them lose our post office in home city. It's handy for businesses like myself just to run in there and get postage and... And mail out rocks.

Speaker 0: Yeah, it would be a real shame if that business couldn't mail out its rocks. Like this 1 that says, real women heart little wieners, or this 1 that says, the grass is greener under my wiener. I mean, that's a perfect rock right there. If the Postal Service stopped delivering gut busters like that, it would be a fucking tragedy. Although, not for me to be honest, since I already bought mine, and I've got to say, it's definitely funnier in person.

1 of the funniest things about it is how genuinely heavy this is. And look, it's not just small businesses. Companies like FedEx and UPS often hand off their packages to the postal service for the last leg of the delivery, especially in rural areas. Amazon also contracts many of its deliveries out to it. And that, weirdly enough, brings us to 1 of the biggest things standing in the way of the USPS getting the federal assistance it so badly needs right now, because this guy has strongly opposed giving it sufficient aid.

And many believe that's because of its relationship with Amazon, owned of course by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, whose political coverage is hated by the president, who, as we know, makes policy decisions based on his never-ending game of 6 degrees of how is this about me? Just watch him try and explain why the Postal Service should not get federal help.

Speaker 8: The Postal Service is a joke because they're handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies and every time they bring a package they lose money on it. A post office should raise the price of a package by approximately 4 times, because they don't raise them. For some reason, these people have been in there a long time, but for some reason, they're very cozy with some of these companies. And they don't raise the price of a package.

Speaker 0: Okay, first, the Postal Service is not a joke. It delivers jokes, yes, and they are, as we know, absolutely hilarious, but it's not in itself a joke. Greener under my wiener. This is the funnest rock of all time. Jesus Christ.

But second, if the Postal Service quadruples prices on companies, those package delivery costs will almost certainly be passed on to the consumer, because their companies, they don't give a shit. And third, it isn't cutting sweetheart deals to lose money on every delivery, because in addition to everything else we've already discussed, that 2006 law made it illegal for the USPS to price parcel delivery below its cost. So in summation here, Trump is absolutely convinced that the Postal Service's biggest problem is 1 of the few things that is not actually 1 of its problems. And that's not just annoying, it's really worrying. Especially as just this week, he replaced the outgoing Postmaster General with this guy, Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor.

And that appointment has worried many, many people that Trump may now be able to bend the Postal Service to his will, presumably, meaning that by next year, every stamp in America will feature 1 of Jeff Bezos' dick pics. And the thing is, there are absolutely solutions that would enable the Postal Service to help themselves, but for all the reasons that we've discussed, their hands are tied when it comes to pricing on their main product. Which may actually help explain some of their very weird side hustles. For instance, you can go on their website and buy this costume for your dog, which is a great way to make your dog look like it's performing a postal-themed rendition of Dick in a Box. Also, a few years back, they entered into a bizarre partnership with Forever 21 to unveil a postal service themed fashion line.

Although, as this YouTuber will tell you, there were a few issues with their garments.

Speaker 3: Oh my gosh! Why? Why is any of this happening? It's like, yes, I am the priority. My boobs are the priority.

Overall, I'm gonna give it a 3 and a half out of 10.

Speaker 0: Yeah. When you're wearing nothing but the word priority stretched over your chest, it's a little weird to realize that the answer to the question, why is any of this happening, is at least in part, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. But look, branching out into fashion clearly won't save the postal service. That is why it is so important that they're given much more flexibility, not just on pricing, but also on the types of services they can offer. Now, experts suggest that the post offices could expand their services to issue things like hunting and fishing licenses.

And perhaps the best option is something called postal banking, where the post office doesn't so much act as a bank, as provide some very basic financial services, like savings accounts and check cashing. That wouldn't just generate revenue, it could also help the estimated 25 percent of people in this country living in unbanked or underbanked communities, who are often forced to turn to alternative financial services like payday lenders, which can charge up to 400 percent in fees and interest. And this wouldn't be completely out of the postal services lane. Not only do they already provide some services like selling money, orders, money transfers, and prepaid cards. But up until the 1960s, they were already doing it.

Speaker 9: Though 90 percent of its income is derived from the sale of stamps, the post office is also the largest savings bank in the country and the largest agency for the transfer of money. It takes in more than 1 and a half billion dollars annually.

Speaker 0: You know, it's depressing that the weirdest thing about watching old-timey clips now isn't that they're in black and white or that people are wearing hats. It's that everyone is standing next to each other in a public place with no fear of dying. Honestly, at this point, I have such severe quarantine brain, I could wake up in the Jurassic period and my first thought would be, holy shit, those stegosauruses are standing way too close together. But look, postal banking is clearly more of a long-term solution. It won't get the USPS out of its current mess.

What they badly need is an infusion of funding as soon as possible. And not only should we be demanding that they get that, Congress should also take a look at undoing some of the more onerous terms in that 2006 law. And until then, there might actually be something small that we can do here. Because the purchase of stamps is still a key revenue generator for them, and you can actually get stamps made. TV shows have done this in the past.

American Idol sold stamps, and Veep and Full Frontal recently did giveaways. And while it will not come close to raising the 90 billion dollars the Postal Service badly needs, We've actually been working with Stamps.com for weeks to not just do a giveaway, but to produce a run of stamps that are available for you to buy right now. If you go to Stamps.com slash Last Stamp Tonight, you can find postage featuring Chee John, a Bolivian zebra, Mr. Nutter Butter, and our personal favorite, and now, a stamp. You can buy sheets of these for the next month, and I would really encourage you to do that.

They are the perfect way to mail a card that supports the USPS in its time of need, while also saying, I like last week tonight, and I'm sorry I forgot Mother's Day, which you did, you piece of shit. If you like this segment, please, buy a stamp and support the postal service. If you hated it, buy 1 anyway, and mail me a letter about how much I suck. It's all the same to them. You'd be doing a really nice thing.

That's our show. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week. Good night! It's you!

I know you! Hi! Hi! You're very good at interrupting things. You're very good!

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USPS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)