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The U.S. Postal Service has backed down from its plan to stop Saturday mail delivery.

The postal service's board said Wednesday that it will continue to deliver mail six days a week. In February, the agency announced a plan to stop delivering mail on Saturdays, except for packages and express mail.

The board said Wednesday it decided to stay the course because of a Congressional mandate for Saturday delivery that had been on the books since the 1980s. Congress decided to keep that mandate last month, when it passed a funding measure to keep the government running.

The Postal Service had been hoping Congress would strip that mandate out.

Even though the agency indicated its current plan is to postpone the end of Saturday delivery, it's unlikely that move will happen anytime soon.

For that to happen, the postal service needs Congress to act. And lawmakers have yet to step in to resolve postal service woes, unless there's been a pressing deadline.

The next financial crunch for the Postal Service will be in October when the agency will again come dangerously close to not having enough cash to pay bills.

The U.S. Postal Service had said its plan would not violate the law, because it's only changing six-day delivery -- not ending it -- since packages would continue to be delivered on Saturdays.

That logic was embraced by some House Republicans, including Rep. Darrell Issa, who runs the House Oversight Committee. Issa said he was "disappointed," with the agency's reversal.

"It's quite clear that special interest lobbying and intense political pressure played a much greater role in the Postal Service's change of heart than any real or perceived barrier to implementing what had been announced," Issa said. http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/10/news/saturday-mail-delivery/index.html
?source=cnn_bin]
HAH! Good old Issa, staying true to the Company Line of "Privatize EVERYTHING!"

In case anyone has forgotten WHY the Postal Service has been struggling for so long: A key culprit for the Postal Service's cash problems has been a 2006 congressional mandate, under which it has to pre-fund healthcare benefits for future retirees, and do all that within ten years. And that was just the beginning.

It has nothing to do with the Postal Service being badly run; it's not.

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There are few organizations as efficient as the U.S. Postal Service. Really.

And the Post Office has been fantastically good at operational improvements. Literally billions of items are processed every week (about 700million/day;) picked up, sorted and distributed across one of the physically largest countries in the world. The distance from Anchorage to Miami covers a staggering 5,100 miles, and works out to a miniscule .009 cent/mile for a first class letter! Compare that to Pony Express pricing (in 1860 $10/oz and 10 days Missouri to California,) and adjusted for inflation you’ll be hard pressed to find any business that has continually improved its service, at ever lower (constantly declining when adjusted for inflation) prices.

The Post Office has accomplished its record improvements with an almost entirely union workforce.

Executive compensation is surprisingly low. The CEO makes about $800,000/year. Competitor CEOs make much more. At Fedex (the Post Office delivers more items every day than Fedex does in a whole year) the CEO made over $7,400,000, and at UPS (the Post Office delivers more items each week than UPS does annually) the CEO made $9,500,000. So, despite this remarkable effectiveness, the CEO makes only about 1/10th CEOs of much smaller delivery organizations.

The Post Office understands what it must do, and does it extremely well. It knows its “hedgehog concept” and relentlessly pursues it to unparalleled performance. Yet, it is barred from raising prices, is losing money, and is now planning to close 3,700 locations and dramatically curtail services – such as overnight and Saturday delivery – in a radical cost reduction effort.

Over a decade ago the Post Office tried to enter new businesses in record retention (medical, income, taxation), automated bill payment, social security check administration and a raft of other opportunities that would provide government delivery and storage services to various agencies and to under-served users such as low-income and the elderly. But its mandate did not include these services, and expansion into new markets required a change in charter which was not approved by Congress. http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2011/12/06/why-the-postal-serv
ice-is-going-out-of-business/]
But what DID Congress do?

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In 2006 Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which requires that the Postal Service pre-fund 100 percent of its health benefits for 75 years. Not just that, but the USPS was given only 10 years to accomplish the task. That's something no other organization (public or private) is required to do. Prior to the 2006 act, USPS generated a profit; now, with the additional $5.5 billion a year it must pre-fund, it's facing a budget shortfall.

Not surprisingly, the 2006 legislation was favored by industry lobbyists who wanted to privatize the mail industry. Not only did the bill add the burden of pre-funding benefits, it also made it more difficult to make additional funds, prohibiting the USPS from branching out into non-postal services. Previously, the Postal Service had experimented with offering services like online bill pay, but abandoned those efforts under pressure from Congress. Private companies like FedEx have poured money into lobbying Washington, giving them influence over rules affecting the USPS as well as netting them government contracts.

The argument goes, however, that in the age of email the postal service is a relic, unused and losing money. But the communities hit hardest by closures are rural, where residents may live miles from the nearest town and rely on the postal service for deliveries. In addition, Reuters found that many of those who would be affected by closure live in areas with limited or no broadband Internet connectivity, something the Postal Service did not take into account when reviewing which offices to shutter.

Facing a budget gap, it's easy to understand why the Postal Service is putting the closure of post offices on the table. But the agency is facing a burden unmatched by private competitors. The move fits in with the GOP ideal of privatization — but it could also leave millions of Americans with decreased access to mail service. http://current.com/groups/news-blog/93753691_its-not-the-internet-the-
real-reason-the-post-office-is-struggling.htm

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When there's no more Postal Service and you get to pay high prices to send anything to anyone, just remember: It was your GOP "representatives" at work!