First-class mail service is headed for a significant slowdown beginning next spring, unless Congress acts to help the struggling U.S. Postal Service.

In order to save $2.1 billion annually and stave off possible bankruptcy, USPS is planning next May to end almost all overnight delivery of first-class letters and postcards. Such mail would instead take at least two to three business days for arrival.

The cutbacks will not impact Express Mail or Priority Mail services, according to the agency.

The first-class mail change would come about because the Postal Service is preparing to shutter about half of all its mail processing plants in the U.S. More than 250 facilities would close and about 28,000 workers laid off under a plan adopted in September.

Postal officials say they must take drastic steps and cut the budget by $20 billion so that the agency becomes profitable by 2015.

But critics of the plan say another option exists.

Back in 2006, the Republican-led Congress adopted legislation (the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act) which forced the USPS—which does not receive any money from the federal budget—to prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years. In other words, the Postal Service was ordered to pay for the benefits of workers it hasn’t even hired yet and do it an accelerated time frame.

If this mandate was changed, the USPS would today be running in the black, says consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

Representative Stephen Lynch (D-MA) has introduced bipartisan legislation that would allow the agency to spend more of its own money to pay down its deficits, while still paying nearly $7 billion towards pensions and other costs.

–Noel Brinkerhoff

USPS Plan Will Hasten Demise of a Still-Vital Institution (Postal Reporter News Blog)