Service or Business: Congress Can’t Avoid the USPS Question Anymore
As the Postal Service warns it could run out of cash, lawmakers must decide what the mail is actually for and who it must serve
On March 17, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s successor, David Steiner, sat before Congress with a warning that sounded familiar and yet more urgent than before. The United States Postal Service, he said, could run out of cash as early as 2027 if nothing changes. He asked lawmakers for relief: more borrowing authority, adjustments to retirement obligations, and greater flexibility to manage a system under strain.
The explanation he offered was straightforward. First-Class Mail, the most profitable category, has been declining for years. Costs tied to labor, infrastructure, and retirement benefits remain high. Pricing is constrained. The workforce is aging. The math, he argued, no longer works.
That is all true. However, it is not new either.
What makes this moment different is not that the Postal Service is struggling. It is that the warning now exposes a deeper question Congress has avoided answering for years: what, exactly, is the Postal Service supposed to be?
This Community Is Powered by You
What started as a small circle has grown into something much bigger, and it’s all because of readers like you.
Every time you forward this email, post it on socials, or bring someone new into the fold, you’re helping build one of the most passionate, independent political communities out there.
Want to keep the momentum going?
Share this newsletter with someone who should be part of this conversation.
Thank you for being here. It means everything.
A Crisis Years in the Making
There is a temptation in Washington to treat each new warning as a fresh emergency. That framing suggests urgency while quietly erasing history. However, the Postal Service’s financial problems did not emerge last year, or even during the pandemic. They have been building for decades.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the nonpartisan watchdog that tracks long-term federal risks, has listed USPS’s financial viability as a “high-risk” issue since 2009. That designation is not handed out lightly. It signals a structural problem that has gone unresolved for years.
Since 2007, the Postal Service has lost money in nearly every year. First-Class Mail volume, once the backbone of its finances, has been cut roughly in half as billing, communication, and advertising moved online. The rise of private carriers such as UPS and FedEx has intensified competition for package delivery, even as USPS continues to handle much of the last-mile delivery.
Congress has not ignored these trends entirely. The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 eliminated a uniquely burdensome requirement that USPS pre-fund retiree health benefits decades in advance. It also restructured how those benefits are paid. On paper, the law provided tens of billions of dollars in financial relief.
Yet the reforms did not solve the underlying problem. They bought time, but they did not answer the fundamental question.
A System Built on a Contradiction
The modern Postal Service operates under a tension that has never been fully resolved.
Federal law describes it as “a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States.” It is supposed to “bind the Nation together” and provide reliable service to all communities, regardless of geography.
At the same time, since the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which took effect in 1971, Congress has expected USPS to largely fund itself through its own revenue. That law transformed the old Post Office Department, which had received direct taxpayer support, into a quasi-independent entity expected to operate more like a business, with occasional infusions for specific Congressionally mandated services.
The result is a system told to behave like two different things at once.
It is required to deliver everywhere, at relatively uniform prices, six days a week. It is expected to reach remote mountain roads, isolated farms, and small towns far from major logistics hubs. It is also expected to balance its books without the kind of sustained public funding that supports other national infrastructure.
That is not a temporary imbalance. It is a structural contradiction.
A Brief Look Back: What the Post Office Was For
The tension becomes clearer when placed in historical context.
The American postal system predates the Constitution. In 1775, the Continental Congress created a national postal network and appointed Benjamin Franklin as its first Postmaster General. The goal was not profit. It was communication, coordination, and cohesion during a revolution.
The Constitution later gave Congress the power to “establish Post Offices and post Roads.” That authority was not incidental. It reflected an understanding that a large republic could not function without a reliable means of connecting distant communities.
Early postal policy reinforced that idea. Newspapers were delivered at subsidized rates to spread information and support democratic participation. Routes were extended into rural and frontier areas even when they were not profitable. Uniform pricing helped ensure that distance did not determine access.
The post office was not designed as a business. It was designed as infrastructure.
Service or Convenience?
That history brings us to the central question that underlies the current crisis.
Is the Postal Service a legacy convenience, increasingly replaced by digital communication and private carriers? Or is it still what the Constitution and early policymakers envisioned: a public service that binds the country together?
If it is a convenience, then market logic applies. Services can be reduced or eliminated where they are not profitable. Prices can rise to reflect costs. Rural areas, with their long distances and lower density, will naturally receive less.
If it is a public service, the logic is different. The point is not efficiency alone, but rather universal access. Some routes will cost more than they generate. Some services will exist because they are necessary, not because they are profitable.
Congress has tried to avoid choosing between these models. The result is a system caught in between.
Where the Consequences Land
For many Americans, the distinction may feel abstract. A slower delivery time or a higher stamp price is an inconvenience, not a crisis.
That is not the case everywhere.
In rural communities, the Postal Service is not easily replaced. Broadband internet may be unavailable, unreliable, or unaffordable. Private shipping networks are thinner and often more expensive. There is no seamless substitute waiting in the wings.
Mail is how people receive medications, pay bills, obtain official documents, and stay connected to services that others can access online. Delays are not simply frustrating. They can be consequential.
A late delivery is not just an inconvenience when it involves prescription medication. A missed or delayed document is not minor when it involves a deadline. What might register as a nuisance in one place becomes a disruption in another.
See our recent article about the USPS change to the postmark and the impact on mail-in ballots and more:
That loss matters even beyond the mail. After the State Department moved to bar many nonprofit public libraries from serving as passport acceptance facilities, rural post offices became even more important as one of the few nearby places where residents can still handle certain federal paperwork in person. If those post offices close too, the next option may be much farther away and much harder to access.
As the Senate considers the SAVE America Voting Act that could make passports more important for voting access, this impact has increasing impact. See our recent reporting on this here:
Reliable mail service, in these communities, is not redundant infrastructure. It is often the infrastructure that keeps daily life functioning.
Paying In, Getting Less
The challenges facing rural mail delivery are not isolated. They reflect a broader pattern in how infrastructure is delivered and who is asked to make up the difference.
Taxes are supposed to fund a baseline of shared systems. Roads, schools, emergency services, and basic utilities are not luxuries. They are part of what it means to live in a functioning society.
Yet in many rural areas, that baseline is thinner. Residents travel farther for basic services and wait longer for emergency response. Schools rely on fundraisers to cover routine needs. Fire protection depends on volunteers. Road maintenance can be inconsistent, especially outside town centers. Public transportation is often nonexistent.
On paper, the cost of living may be lower. In practice, the cost of accessing services is higher.
That difference is not always captured in statistics, but it is felt in daily life. Time, distance, and out-of-pocket costs fill the gaps where infrastructure is less robust.
Mail fits into that pattern. When delivery slows, when post offices reduce hours or close, when faster service requires additional fees, the burden grows. It becomes another way that people spend more—of their time, their money, and their effort—to reach what others receive as a baseline.
It is not that rural Americans receive no service. Rather, they are increasingly asked to do more to make that service work.
The Mail and the Machinery of Government
The stakes rise further when considering how the government itself uses the mail.
Jury summonses are sent through the Postal Service. So are tax notices, court documents, and many forms of official communication. These are not optional messages. They carry legal obligations and deadlines.
The legal system operates on the assumption that notice has been delivered reliably and in a timely manner. Courts may offer relief when notice clearly fails, yet that process is reactive and uneven. It requires individuals to prove that something went wrong, often after the fact.
If mail delivery becomes less reliable in certain areas, the burden does not disappear. It shifts. People remain responsible for responding to notices they may receive late or not at all.
That creates a problem that is no longer just logistical. It begins to touch on due process, the constitutional principle that people must have a fair opportunity to know about and respond to legal actions affecting them.
A government that depends on the mail to summon citizens, enforce laws, and administer benefits cannot treat that system as optional or uneven without consequence.
The Political Gap
There is also a political dimension that is difficult to ignore.
Rural communities are often described as the backbone of the country, the heartland, or the places where “real America” lives. Those phrases appear regularly in speeches and campaign stops.
Yet when hospitals close, when post offices consolidate, when schools struggle, and when emergency services thin out, that language rarely translates into sustained investment.
Symbolic importance remains high. Material support is uneven.
The Postal Service debate sits squarely within that gap.
What Congress Must Decide
The immediate question before Congress is how to respond to the Postal Service’s financial warning, whether to raise its borrowing limit, adjust its obligations, or make additional reforms.
The larger question is harder.
Lawmakers can continue to treat USPS as both a public service and a business, adjusting the system at the margins as problems arise. That approach has defined the past two decades, and it has not resolved the underlying tension.
Or they can decide.
If the Postal Service is a business, then its future will be shaped by profitability. Service will concentrate where it makes economic sense. Rural and less dense areas will receive less. That outcome should be stated clearly, not presented as an unintended side effect.
See our previous reporting on Steiner and the privatization option here:
Notes: Articles roll into the archive over time. Become a paid subscriber for full access to our extensive catalog.
If it is a public service, then it must be supported as one. That does not mean abandoning efficiency or accountability. It means recognizing that universal service has costs that cannot always be covered by revenue alone.
There are alternatives in theory. The government could build a new system for delivering official notices that does not rely on the mail. It could attempt to universalize broadband access to the point where digital communication becomes a true substitute.
Those options are not currently in place. Until they are, the Postal Service remains the only system that reaches every address in the country at an affordable cost.
The Easiest Answer
Given that reality, the most straightforward solution is also the least dramatic.
Support the Postal Service directly as essential infrastructure.
That approach does not require reinventing the system. It requires acknowledging what it already is in practice. The government depends on it. Citizens depend on it. No equally universal, equally affordable alternative exists.
The financial challenge is real. The structural contradiction is real. The consequences of inaction are also real.
What This Is Really About
This debate is not just about stamps or balance sheets. It is about how the country understands its obligations to its own people.
Some services exist because they are profitable. Others exist because they are necessary. The line between those categories has been shifting for years, often in ways that push costs and burdens onto individuals.
On that line sits the United States Postal Service. A republic that still sends its laws, ballots, summonses, and obligations through the mail cannot honestly treat the mail as optional. If the obligation to respond is universal, then the system that delivers that obligation must be as well.
Rural communities have already been asked to endure thinner infrastructure, longer wait times, and higher costs to access basic services. Asking them to absorb a weakened postal system, too, would not be modernization. It would be one more step in a familiar direction.
And at some point, the question becomes unavoidable. If the country still expects to reach everyone, then it has to be willing to support the systems that make that possible.
If you believe these issues deserve more attention, consider subscribing. We write about the systems people rely on—and what happens when they start to fray.
Sources:
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “Statement of Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer David Steiner before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Government Operations, ‘Oversight of the Postal Service: The Financial Future under Postmaster General Steiner’,” March 17, 2026.
United States Postal Service, “Form 10-Q Quarter I FY 2026,” February 5, 2026.
Government Accountability Office, “U.S. Postal Service: Urgent Action Needed to Fix Unsustainable Business Model and Improve Service Performance,” March 17, 2026.
Government Accountability Office, “U.S. Postal Service: Action Needed to Fix Unsustainable Business Model,” December 16, 2025.
GovInfo / U.S. Government Publishing Office, “39 U.S. Code § 101 — Postal policy,” current version accessed March 22, 2026.
GovInfo / U.S. Government Publishing Office, “An Act to Improve and Modernize the Postal Service, to Reorganize the Post Office Department, and for Other Purposes” (Postal Reorganization Act of 1970), August 12, 1970.
Reuters, “US Postal Service to ask Congress for urgent reforms to survive ‘beyond next year’,” March 16, 2026.
United States Postal Service, “U.S. Postal Service Reports Fiscal Year 2022 Results,” November 10, 2022.
U.S. Courts, “Summoned for Federal Jury Service?,” accessed March 22, 2026.
United States Postal Service, “Publication 100: The United States Postal Service: An American History,” accessed March 22, 2026.
This administration has done this on purpose to privatize it. USPS has always been a service not a business. Here’s just something else the regime can suck the life out of and the American people. REVOLUTION!
It is a service. It's mandated in the US Constitution. tRump and the cons have no regard for the Constitution.