Losing $25M a day: The United States Postal Service is losing an average of $25 million per day, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told a Congressional hearing Wednesday.
“The Postal Service is currently operating with a broken business model,” Donahoe said, according to The Washington Post. “We are losing $25 million every day and we are on an unsustainable path.”
In 2012, the Postal Service lost nearly $16 billion, which was nearly seven times its fiscal deficit four years earlier, the Post pointed out.
“Since the economic recession of 2008, we have been experiencing a significant imbalance between revenues and costs. This imbalance will only get worse in the coming decade unless laws that govern the postal service are changed,” Donahoe said in a video posted by Fox News.
Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, agreed with Donahoe’s assessment.
“Even if you take away the $11 billion default over two years, the fact is, in the real world, the post office is bleeding red ink,” he said, according to ABC News.
Donahoe originally proposed cutting Saturday mail deliveries to save money, but that plan has faced resistance within the Postal Service, reported the International Business Times.
Fredric V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), said that Donahoe “wants to degrade its last-mile delivery network by cutting Saturday delivery,” the Times said.
Last summer, around 7,000 delegates with the NALC voted on a “motion of no confidence” in the job Donahoe is doing.
