The leadership of the United States Postal Service has laid out a stark assessment of the agency's finances before lawmakers in Washington. According to the report, Postmaster General David Steiner appeared before a Senate committee and told members that the Postal Service is operating under what he described as a broken business model, welcoming the committee's focus on fixing it.
Steiner framed the problem around obligations that he said no private company faces. According to the report, the Postal Service is mandated by law to deliver to every address, more than 170 million of them, six days a week, with over a million new delivery stops being added every day. He argued that these requirements leave the agency without the flexibility that private businesses and other government bodies enjoy.
The Postmaster General pointed to detailed figures to illustrate the strain. According to the report, 84 percent of city delivery routes and 52 percent of rural delivery routes are financially underwater. He added that 58 percent, or 18,000, of the country's post offices are losing money, incurring over 2.5 billion dollars in operating costs, and said that in a normal business a company would adjust routes or close locations that lose money.
Steiner also listed a series of legal and accounting constraints he said worsen the picture. According to the report, the service is not allowed to unilaterally raise prices and is required to give billions of dollars in discounts to many mailers. He said its retirement assets can only be invested in US Treasuries, that an allocation of certain retirement benefits costs about 3.5 billion dollars a year, and that a statutory limit caps borrowing at 15 billion dollars.
Despite the constraints, the Postmaster General said the agency is taking steps to recover. According to the report, the Postal Service has reduced transportation costs by 2 billion dollars, cut work hours by 56 million hours, equivalent to 3 billion dollars, and reduced its overall headcount by 28,000. He also said it cannot manage its own workers' compensation claims, which cost between 400 and 800 million dollars a year.
Steiner presented the testimony as a case for congressional action while pointing to recent operational gains. According to the report, he said the service had made dramatic progress in improving its delivery scores, recently hitting on-time delivery numbers not seen in at least the last five years. He described that as significant progress but not enough, telling the committee the choice before Congress was clear.