The US Postal Service will run out of cash within a year unless Congress lifts a decades-old cap and allows the agency to borrow more money, the new postmaster general warned. If it doesn't, the Postal Service might not be able to pay its employees or vendors by February 2027, with potentially dire consequences for mail delivery, Postmaster General David Steiner told the AP. "How long are employees going to work and vendors going to show up if we're not paying them?" Steiner said Wednesday. The postmaster general is scheduled to testify before Congress later this month about the Postal Service's financial struggles and the need to change longstanding rules that he considers burdensome. He singled out the $15 billion cap on borrowing that has been in place since 1990.
The Postal Service is funded mostly through postage revenue and the services it provides. Steiner said it has all the burdens of a government agency, such as having to deliver mail six days a week to every address, but none of the benefits, such as an annual appropriation from the federal budget. "If you want us to deliver everywhere, every day, we'll do it," Steiner said. "That's not a problem. But who is going to pay for it?" Steiner took over the struggling Postal Service last July. He said raising the borrowing limit is the easiest thing lawmakers can do immediately to help the agency. "That will buy us the time to make the fixes we need to make, and we can sail on down the road," he said.
He has called for expanding the service's revenue base, including extending its last-mile delivery service to more entities. Last-mile delivery refers to the final step of getting a package from a local distribution center to a customer's door, the most labor-intensive part of the delivery process. USPS' net losses for the 2025 fiscal year totaled $9 billion, even though total operating revenue increased by $916 million or 1.2%, due largely to its Ground Advantage shipping service. Net losses in fiscal year 2024 were $9.5 billion.
Ultimately, other changes are needed, as well, Steiner said, including giving the Postal Service the authority to raise postage prices high enough to cover losses. He said increasing the price of a first-class stamp to 95 cents, from today's 78 cents, would be enough to "fix" the Postal Service's fiscal woes. A decade ago, a first-class stamp was 47 cents, although postal officials note it's still the lowest price in the industrialized world and covers a delivery range that's 10 times farther than in other countries. But instead of helping the Postal Service, Steiner said regulators and Congress have imposed costly mandates. "I like to say we sort of got thrown overboard on a ship into the cold water, right? And instead of throwing us a life preserver, we get thrown an anchor," he said.
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