AT THE bottom of its press releases the US Postal Service brags that if it were a private company, it would rank 35th on the Fortune 500 list. Were it a private firm, it would also be bankrupt. The service loses $25m a day.

Hit hard by the recession and the march towards electronic mail, the Postal Service is in desperate need of reform. To its credit, it has produced a bold plan to cut costs and increase revenue. But the agency inhabits a unique place in America's bureaucracy. Although it receives no public money, it is obliged to reach every house, at a fixed price, no matter what the cost; and Congress has the final say over its business plan.

So it was that on April 25th the Senate passed a bill that would delay many of the reforms sought by the service. The measure halves the number of sorting centres to be closed and protects underused post offices for at least another year. It also puts off a decision on whether to end Saturday delivery, a move the service craves and the public accepts.

A normal business could not operate like this. Over three-quarters of America's post offices do not make a profit. Take, for example, the office in Alix, Arkansas, which last year cost $48,452 to run and brought in just $3,642 in revenue. Its earnings may be thinned by the presence of eight other post offices in an 11-mile radius. Under the Senate bill, the Alix office would remain open.

A more pressing concern for the service involves payments into a health-benefits fund for the future retired. Under a law passed in 2006 the post was given a decade to prepay its obligations for the next 75 years. In other words, it must fund the benefits of workers yet to be born. The Senate bill would provide some much-needed relief, reducing the prepayments and stretching them out over a longer period of time. It would also repay to the agency the more than $11 billion which it overpaid into a federal pension fund.

The focus will now shift to the House, which is considering a postal-reform bill of its own. Its author, Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, plans to end Saturday delivery and establish a financial-control board with a mandate to cut costs. His bill would take politics out of the process by creating an independent commission to oversee the closure of post offices. And it would aim to bring the pay of postal employees into line with the private sector.

The House seems in no rush to vote on the measure. Meanwhile, the Postal Service has said that if Congress fails to act it will soon start closing offices. That might be more to Mr Issa's liking than a bill hashed out with the Senate.