Why It Matters
A Brookings researcher told a House subcommittee last week that the U.S. Postal Service’s financial condition cannot be fixed by cutting costs alone — and that Congress, not postal management, is the only actor that can resolve it.
Elena Patel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, submitted a statement for the record to the House Subcommittee on Government Operations on June 4, for a hearing on the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) financial condition, postal rates, and the Postal Regulatory Commission. Her central argument: the Postal Service is not mismanaged, but structurally underfunded by design — and the design is federal law.
The Big Picture
The USPS financial crisis is accelerating toward a hard deadline. The agency ended fiscal year 2025 with approximately $8.2 billion in cash — roughly one month of operations — and leadership has warned it could run out within a year. Its statutory borrowing ceiling of $15 billion, set in 1992 and never adjusted, has been maxed out since 2012.
These academics always weigh in without knowing all of the facts. They then expect everyone to accept their opinions as facts. The USPS is terribly mismanaged; this is confirmed by the OIG in audit after audit. They cannot get the mail delivered in a timely fashion anywhere in the country. Steiner himself has said to the Subcommittee that they “could do more.” This is another real world versus academia contrast.