06/07/2026
FYI
Congress Presses Postal Regulators on Labor Costs and Rural Delivery
A House subcommittee hearing with the Postal Regulatory Commission highlighted two main challenges facing the USPS: a labor cost structure that consumes roughly 70 cents of every dollar the agency spends, and a universal service obligation that requires it to serve rural Americans that private competitors are under no obligation to reach.
A member of the PRC put it this way: “The situation facing the Postal Service is a five-alarm fire.”
The hearing ended without legislative commitments. But its exchanges made clear that any path forward will require Congress to make difficult choices about what Americans are owed in postal service, who pays for it, and whether an agency whose labor costs are structurally fixed and whose rural obligations are legally mandated can be made financially sustainable — or whether those two facts are, in the end, incompatible without public support. Continues, link in comments 👇
