The U.S. Postal Service is hemorrhaging money, and the reason isn't mysterious: mail volume has plummeted nearly half since its peak.
With correspondence dropping 49 percent, the agency faces a financial crisis that repeated bailouts cannot solve. The root cause sits in Congress, which has tied the organization's hands with outdated funding rules that prevent it from adapting to the modern world.
The USPS operates under a unique constraint that private competitors do not face. Congressional mandates require the agency to pre-fund decades of pension obligations upfront, a burden no other federal agency or private company carries. This structure made sense when mail volume was stable and growing. Today, it guarantees a slow financial death.
Each additional rescue package merely delays the reckoning without addressing the fundamental problem. Throwing money at an agency bound by impossible rules is not a solution. It is a band-aid on a broken system.
Congress could modernize the USPS by revising the laws that govern its operations and finances. It could allow the agency flexibility to adjust services, pricing, and operations to match current demand. Instead, lawmakers punt the problem forward, ensuring another crisis follows the next bailout.
The Postal Service has served as a critical infrastructure piece for centuries. That role matters. But keeping it afloat requires Washington to stop treating it as a political football and actually reform the rules that are killing it. Without structural change, no amount of emergency funding will save it.
Author James Rodriguez: "Congress created this mess by refusing to let the Postal Service compete in the real world, and no bailout fixes that until they finally do."
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