Without legislative action the Postal Service could shut down and stop delivering mail by next fall, and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is considering a range of postal reform proposals given urgency because of the USPS’s recent warning it will no longer be able to make payments to the federal government.
USPS projects a $9 billion loss on the year and that it will reach its $15 billion borrowing limit in about a month and miss its $5.5 billion retiree health benefits payment.
Committee chair Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, and financial management subcommittee chair Tom Carper, D-Del, heard testimony on plans that include cutting the postal workforce and moving to a five-day delivery schedule.
The committee says it will weigh a USPS plan to save $20 billion and get out of the red by 2015 by eliminating Saturday delivery, closing about 3,700 post office, cutting 220,000 jobs (some through attrition, but most in violation of collective bargaining agreements), pulling out of the federal employee health care plan and creating its own, replacing a defined benefit retirement plan for new employees with a defined contribution plan, and gaining access to $6.9 billion in overpayments to FERS.
Carper and Collins each have introduced reform legislation designed to keep the USPS solvent, and three bills are pending in the House as well. Lieberman said the committee would take up legislation once the White House submits its own proposal.
