Helped by pausing payments to worker retirement funds, the U.S.Postal Service is no longer on track to run out of money and stop deliveries next year, Postmaster General David Steiner confirmed to Congress on Wednesday.But with people and businesses still sending a lot less mail compared to decades ago, the self-funded federal agency remains close to a financial cliff as it struggles to continue delivering mail six days a week to just about every address in the country.A cash crisis at USPS may now come sometime between 2031 and 2034, according to the agency's latest projections."What we are doing right now is we're basically borrowing money from our retirement plans to fund current operations," Steiner told lawmakers at a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
"I'm not particularly comfortable with that.I promise you our employees are not particularly comfortable with that.
You all shouldn't be comfortable with that.None of us should be comfortable with that.
To me, that's why we have to have this discussion of how we fix this broken business model."Steiner's comments come more than three months after he warned lawmakers that deliveries may have to end by February 2027.Since then, the Postal Service has restricted non-essential spending and signed a multi-year deal to complete the last mile of DHL eCommerce's package deliveries in the United States.Customers may have noticed temporary 8% price hikes that USPS started in late April to help cover rising fuel costs.Those are set to expire in mid-January.
A longer-term, 5% bump to the price of a first-class "forever" stamp to 82 cents is set to begin July 12.It will be the eighth increase over the past five years.The Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent federal agency that oversees the Postal Service, has also provided a cushion of around $15 billion by waiving USPS' required minimum retirement payments through fiscal year 2030."The Commission's action offers some '...