The U.S. Postal Service is testing a retail window dedicated to small-business customers at 87 post offices nationwide.
The window, called the Business Line, is reserved for use by businesses whose transactions often are more complex than those of other retail customers.
Read MoreDespite strong bipartisan support for overhauling the Postal Service, congressional leaders are not making legislation enough of a priority, House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., said Monday. He said leaders in the House and Senate are “unenthusiastic” about moving a bill. “They’re saying, ‘Yeah, if the committee reports out a bill, we’ll try to take it up,'” Davis told a meeting of the National Association of Postal Supervisors. That attitude is at odds with “the strong support, by both Republicans and Democrats, in both the House and the Senate [government operations committees] to pass reform this year,” Davis said.
Read MoreUSPS Postmaster General John Potter has warned that a postal rate increase planned for 2006 could be 4 cents or more for first class letters unless restrictions on how the agency operates are eased.
Potter asked a joint House-Senate hearing on the future of the post office to free USD3 billion in postal funds from an escrow account and to remove a USD27 billion obligation for the agency to cover military retirement benefits for its workers who previously served in the armed forces.
Read MoreThe U.S. Postal Service’s financial outlook is bleak and getting bleaker, according to members of Congress, a presidential commission, the General Accounting Office and postal officials themselves. It is bad enough that some federal officials are warning of a huge taxpayer bailout — or dramatic increases in postal rates — if Congress does not reorganize the USD67 billion-a-year entity soon to help it operate more efficiently. “The Postal Service as an institution probably cannot survive without fundamental reform,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said at a Capitol Hill hearing this month. A nine-member presidential commission that spent seven months last year studying the future of the Postal Service sounded a similar alarm. The panel concluded in a 181-page report that the institution is in “significant jeopardy” and may not be able to continue delivering mail to every address six days a week.
Read MoreHow do you reform the U.S. Postal Service to insure it thrives and survives without stepping on too many toes? Congress knows it ain’t easy. There are many who support needed changes – for example, the two biggest U.S. express delivery companies support reform – but only as long as it doesn’t infringe on their business territories.
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