Postmaster General John E. Potter is again pushing this week to eliminate Saturday delivery as a cost-cutting measure at the beleaguered United States Postal Service, which is projected to lose $7 billion this year.
But his effort faces a big roadblock in the form of the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) and Congress.
The PRC is an independent organization that regulates the Postal Service and would have to approve dropping a day from the delivery schedule. From there, Congress would have to agree to the change, since federal law mandates six-day delivery.
As noted in a November story on the state of the Postal Service, PRC chair Ruth Y. Goldway has signaled that she has little interest in dropping Saturday service. In Congressional testimony in November, she said cutting a day of service could undermine “the vitality of the mail system” and threaten the postal monopoly.
“From a market perspective, the Postal Service could lose its greatest strategic advantage – ubiquity,” she said. “Reducing service is detrimental to mail growth and to public perception of the value of the mail system.”
