A Plan To Save the Postal Service

The US Postal Service has presented a five year economic plan to congress asking for their help to get through their financial struggles. The Postal Service would like congress to pass legislation concerning the price of postal stamps raising the price to 50 cents. The Postal Service lost revenue in the past three months, during the holidays, which should have been their profitable time of year. Many people did not ship mail first-class which led to a loss of $3.3 billion in revenue. Congress has been working on plans to save the Postal Service from suffering even more losses, but all plans have faced controversy and have not been passed as legislation. The US Postal Service’s plan would help save them $20 billion over the course of the next five years, but they need congress to assist in helping them save $10 billion. The stamps which now cost 45 cents would be raised to 50 cents allowing for $1 billion to be saved per year according the statistics of the Postal Service. However, the plan also calls for some drawbacks. Many post offices would be closed, deliveries would be changed to five day weeks instead of six, and first-class mail would be delivered a day later than usual. The Postal Service would also like to do away with the federal law that requires that it to prefund retiree health care. However, it would create a new health care plan for the employees. The plan also would create a dramatic loss of jobs for the many people who work for the US Postal Service. This plan, while it may greatly benefit the Postal Service by recovering their losses, it also calls for reductions that could also be less beneficial to the economy.