US Postal Service Running Out of Money


The Associated Press is reporting that US Postmaster General John Potter told Congress that the US Postal Service will run out of money unless it gets some help this year from the US government. Potter has also asked to reduce delivery from six days a week to five days a week. His testimony was given at a Federal Workforce, Postal Service and District of Columbia subcommittee hearing on the financial stability of the Postal Service.

The USPS lost almost $3 billion last year and the PMG says it is looking at losing even more this year. According to Potter, if the reduced delivery schedule is approved, the USPS could save up to $3.5 billion each year.

It's hard to believe that cutting delivery by one day could save that much money. But we can think of even more ways the USPS could save: stop printing more than 100 different stamps each year (no country needs that many different stamps, and they're expensive to design and produce), stop advertising on television (that's expensive, and the USPS essentially has a monopoly over many of its services, so why bother advertising!), stop paying people to take surveys about current or proposed postal services and products (sure, I'd take one if they paid ME $10 to do so), stop giving away free boxes and other shipping supplies, and more. The USPS should get lean and mean, not bloated the way it is now, and has been for a long time.