Save Saturday Postal Service!

Use our form below to tell your representative to say "no" to the end of Saturday delivery.

(Flickr/Ben Brophy)

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On February 6, the Postal Service announced that Saturday first-class mail delivery is scheduled for elimination at the beginning of August—the latest and deepest in a series of cuts that threaten to so undermine the service that it will be ripe for bartering off to the private delivery corporations that have long coveted its routes.

This matters because the USPS continues to provide a vital public service and the mail still serves to bind our vast populace together, with many post offices serving as de facto community centers and with the mail becoming a critical prescription drug delivery system. The damage associated with this decision will be most severe in rural areas and inner cities, where small businesses and working families rely on local post offices that are already targeted for shuttering.

The decision will also compromise the drive for fair elections and undermine an industry (state and national elections) that is actually looking to increase the use of the Postal Service as many states consider the model of Oregon and Washington where voters now vote completely by mail.

Moreover, the plan to end key Saturday services is wholly unnecessary. Rep. Paul Ryan and his fellow proponents of austerity manufactured the current crisis in USPS funding when they enacted the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). The PAEA forced the Postal Service to pre-fund its future healthcare benefit payments to retirees for the next seventy-five years. That’s something no corporation could or would do, as it required the service to divert more than $5 billion annually to prepay the health benefits of retirees who have not yet been hired.

Congress has the power to block the USPS from cutting Saturday service. It should begin there and then allow it to compete by providing bridge funding for the service and by developing a plan that undoes the damage done by the PAEA and reforms rules so that the Postal Service can compete in the digital era.

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