The head of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is expected to tell Congress on Tuesday that the agency needs to increase its borrowing capacity or face “the end of the Postal Service as we know it now.”
“In order to ensure our survival beyond next year, we need to increase our borrowing capacity so that we don’t run out of cash,” Postmaster General David Steiner’s written testimony obtained by Reuters said. “The failure to do this could lead to the end of the Postal Service as we know it now.”
USPS, which delivers to more than 170 million U.S. addresses six days a week, has a borrowing cap of $15 billion and has already hit that limit. The agency has reported net losses of $118 billion since 2007. Its most profitable product, first-class mail, has fallen to its lowest volume since the late 1960s.
Steiner told Reuters in December that the agency has a “precarious cash position,” adding that at current spending rates, “we’re basically out of cash in early 2027.”
I have been hearing this since 2005. The postal service used to provide excess revenue to congress instead of banking it for times like this. The postal service needs to revert back to being a full government agency instead of a quasia agency and let Congress fully fund them.