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Community Corner

Congress to Post Office: You Can't Cancel Saturday Deliveries

Congress passed a law this week that will prevent the USPS from reducing Saturday delivery service to save on operating costs.

 

Though recent polls indicate the American people supported the U.S. Postal Service's (USPS) recent decision to eliminate Saturday deliveries in an effort to save $2 billion in operating costs each year, Congress has thwarted that plan.

Congress typically includes a provision in its federal budget each year that requires USPS to deliver mail six days a week. This week, despite pleas from USPS, Congress voted to pass that legislation again this year.

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In the age of technology and e-mail, and with big competitors like FedEx and UPS eating up much of the industry, the U.S. Postal Service is losing billions each year. In 2012, it is estimated the USPS lost between $16-20 billion.

Therefore, USPS recently announced that, in an effort to save roughly $2 billion in costs each year, it would eliminate Saturday delivery of all first-class mail, and deliver only packages and pharmaceutical drugs. The reduction in deliveries would require fewer employees being scheduled to work on Saturdays. The change was supposed to take effect in August of this year.

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However, it seems that will no longer happen.

David Partenheimer, a USPS spokesperson, told Yahoo! Finance that the USPS needs to find a way to reduce costs, otherwise it will soon become "a burden on taxpayers" - in other words, the Postal Service will need to ask the American people for a bail-out of somewhere around $47 billion by the year 2017.

So, it's back to the drawing board for the USPS, as it is now bound to Congress' spending agreement. 

"We will discuss [this all] with our Board of Governors to determine our next steps," Partenheimer told the Huffington Post.

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