The United States Postal Service booked a loss for fiscal 2023 of about $6.5 billion. The nationwide delivery agency predicts that its 10-year plan will right the fiscal delivery vehicle of state, but it was expecting lower losses this year — about $2 billion lower.
An obvious culprit is higher-than-expected inflation, which has made just about everything more expensive. But one expert says the problem runs much deeper than that. Even a great holiday season is unlikely to halt the carrier’s decline.
“It’s a structural deficit,” Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “Costs are very, very difficult to control.”
When other government agencies come up short, they can ask Congress to cover it through the appropriations process. According to the current law, that is not how the Postal Service is supposed to run.