Turning the U.S. Post Office in to a "self-supporting" sovereign group called the U.S. Postal Service sounded similar to a great thought when President Richard Nixon sealed that mutation in to law in 1970. But more than 4 decades later, the imminent purgation module of shutting thousands of post offices and removing Saturday letter smoothness sounds similar to trouble.
A flourishing number of Americans pay their bills and actions a considerable share of their business and personal communications online. While the open has saved on the cost of stamps, the USPS has suffered a serious reject in postage revenue.
The reject of first-class letter is held to accelerate, from 25 percent over the final 5 years to a projected 50 percent more over the next fiv..
Yet a poignant part of the U.S. race still relies on "snail mail" for medication drugs, magazines and to pay their bills. That service is at imminent risk.
Exacerbating the crisis: The group has overpaid up to $7 billion in to the sovereign early retirement system. And the USPS, that does take a few sovereign appropriation for serving the infirm and handling choosing by casting votes by mail, contingency confine increases in postage charges to the acceleration rate.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe not long ago warned Congress that without more -- and deeper -- cuts in crew and services, the group will default on its financial obligations. President Barack Obama, seeing that warning, draft final week to let the group cut letter smoothness from the stream 6 to 5 days a week -- and to give it a few comfort from that unjust retirement-funding burden.
Ideally, the giveaway marketplace would work its illusion and the Postal Service -- or a more e! ffective contestant -- would encounter the public's wants and needs.
However, whilst many Americans wouldn't be adversely affected by a massive call of post-office closings and mail-delivery cutbacks, many other Americans will.
More cutbacks are inevitable. But before the group has to cut as well deeply and quickly, Congress should tally all of the costs. It should consider, for example, permitting the group access to surplus early retirement funds.
Millions of Americans still rest on the Postal Service. Federal lawmakers can't enable it to turn so financially decreased that it can no longer offer its customers.