March 18 (UPI) — Postmaster General David Steiner told Congress that the U.S. Postal Service would be out of money in less than a year if changes aren’t made to boost revenue.
During a hearing Tuesday, Steiner and members of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations appeared divided on how best to avoid a full stoppage in mail service in 12 months’ time.
Steiner asked lawmakers to allow him to borrow more money to cover costs as well as to increase the price of a U.S. first class stamp from 78 cents to 95 cents. He said the cost to mail a single letter in the United States is the lowest in the industrialized world.
“Compare it to France at almost $3 and England at $2.50, and the longest distance those letters have to travel is about 600 miles smaller than the state of Texas,” he told lawmakers.
“We deliver from the tip of Puerto Rico to the tip of Alaska for 78 cents. That’s a distance of 5,000 miles.”
He said if the USPS increased first class stamp costs to 95 cents, it “would largely solve our controllable loss” while still remaining the lowest-priced stamp in the industrialized world.
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told Steiner he’s against increasing the cost of postage to nearly $1.
“It’s going to come down to the three or four of us who are going to have to make some tough decisions that we can look at other people and say, ‘That was a problem. The postmaster general laid it on our doorstep, and we’re not going to kick the can down the road.”
Steiner also asked for greater freedom to borrow more money.
“One easy action, increasing our borrowing authority, buys us time,” he said. “Time that we can use to best determine what the Postal Service should do to best serve the American public.”
Steiner said the USPS has faced a dramatic reduction in the use of mail, from a maximum of about 213 billion pieces of mail per year to about 109 billion pieces of mail.
“For perspective, if all of that lost volume was paid at the current price of a stamp, which is 78 cents, that’s about $81 billion of lost revenue,” he said. “No company could weather that much revenue loss, so it’s not hard to see how we got here.”
In fiscal year 2025, the USPS had a net loss of about $9 billion.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., appeared reluctant to allow Steiner to borrow more money.
“I am very concerned with the caliber of service that we are getting and with the fact that the post office continues to come to us for more money,” she said.
Rep. Kweisi Fume, D-Md., reluctantly sided with the suggestion of raising the USPS’ debit limit.
“It may be hard to sell, but I think most people feel like I do — that rather than do nothing and watch the Titanic sink, that we need to do something.”
