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By Jenna Sundel
News Reporter
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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.
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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."
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Why Is Postmaster General David Steiner Appearing Before a House Oversight Subcommittee?
Last week, Subcommittee on Government Operations Chairman Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, announced a hearing on USPS's financial future under Steiner. Sessions said members of the subcommittee will assess whether USPS is reliable enough for Congress to allow it to borrow more money from the Treasury Department.
"Americans all over the country rely on the U.S. Postal Service to efficiently deliver packages safely and on time. USPS is rapidly losing money and becoming more unreliable each year and is dire need of a course-correction," Sessions said. "While some progress has been made to improve USPS operations, there is still much more work to be done to reform the agency and make up for the billions it has already lost. The Government Operations Subcommittee remains committed on a bipartisan basis to transform and modernize USPS, and I look forward to hearing from Mr. Steiner on his plans to improve its dependability.”
What Options Did Steiner Provide to Cut USPS Costs?
Steiner's testimony identified potential options to cut costs, including ending six-day-a-week deliveries, closing post offices or raising first-class mail stamp prices to $1 or more, up from the current $0.78.
Steiner said USPS would save about $3 billion a year by only delivering five days a week and $840 million by closing small post offices in remote areas. He said these ideas "may not be palatable to Congress or the American public."
Steiner said USPS needs higher stamp prices. While stamp prices are up 46 percent from $0.50 in early 2019, Steiner said they are still far lower than in other countries.
The postmaster general is also expected to tell the House Oversight subcommittee that USPS needs additional reforms, such as pension funding and liabilities calculations, workers' compensation and retirement fund investment strategies.
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Update 3/16/26, 5:32 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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