Such legislation could quickly restore the Postal Service to profitability and put the organization on a stable, long-term financial footing," said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe in a release today. "This lack of action is disappointing."
As is, Donahoe said the service is losing $25 million per day, has defaulted on $11.1 billion in treasury payments and exhausted its borrowing authority.
"As we look to the coming year, we are on an unsustainable financial path," Donahoe said. "... The Postal Service should not have to do business this way, which has undermined the confidence of our customer base and the $800 billion mailing industry we serve."
According to Donahoe, the USPS worked with Congress to build out a viable business model as customer needs have changed. And yet, he said, Congress has failed to make the changes requested. The tradeoff has been significant cost-cutting measures that have included discussions of dropping routine Saturday delivery.
"Over the past two years we have reduced head count by approximately 60,000 career employees," Donahoe said. "We have consolidated 70 of our mail processing facilities. We moved to reduce hours at many of our post offices. We also have worked to substantially increase our package volume along with introducing a same-day delivery service."
Partly because of Congress's inaction, Donahoe said the Postal Service will consider even more aggressive cost-reduction and revenue-generating measures.
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