WASHINGTON – Today, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Carper (D-Del.) released the following reaction to the U.S. Postal Service’s announcement that it will deliver packages seven days a week through a new partnership with Amazon: 
“This announcement by the U.S. Postal Service is a clear example of the innovative solutions that the agency needs to adopt in order to survive and thrive in the 21st century. Partnering with Amazon for Sunday package delivery offers a great deal of promise. It will allow both Amazon and the Postal Service to better serve their customers and has the potential to boost the ailing Postal Service’s bottom line. It might also encourage other companies to pursue similar agreements with the Postal Service, creating even more opportunities for growth. I look forward to learning more about this new agreement and how it will impact the Postal Service’s ongoing challenge to cut costs while increasing revenue. Ultimately, Congress must give the Postal Service the tools, resources, and flexibility it needs so it can right its financial ship and continue to implement forward-thinking ideas like this one. That’s why I continue to work with Dr. Coburn and our colleagues on our bipartisan postal reform bill that will make the necessary changes to ensure the Postal Service is competitive in an era of digital communication and can continue to serve the American public for years to come.”
This is an example of what can happen when innovative ideas are allowed to flourish. The shrink to survive mentality of PMG Donohoe and Senators Carper and Coburn will destroy the Postal Service.
80% of USPS losses since 2007 had NOTHING to do with operations, but stemmed from an absurd congressional mandate to pre-fund retiree healthcare benefits 75 years into the future and to do it in only 10 years at a cost of $5.5 billion/year. No other company or gov’t agency is required to do this. Fix this onerous problem and the USPS can and will adapt to the changing business environment.
Then why are the politicians and Postmaster General Donahoe trying to cut service consolidate mail-processing centers, and eliminate days of delivery? That is destroying the U.S. Postal Service and jobs for our military veterans. The Postal reform act S-1486 would do just that.
It doesn’t make sense to cut service and eliminate delivery days. If they would modify the 5.5 billion dollar every year pre-funding for health benefits for retired employees the United States Postal Service would be just fine
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Now we can see that it didn’t make sense to close all of the facilities that were put on the chopping block. The shrink to survive mentality was wrong! Now if we could address the elephant in the room concerning the retiree health funding, we might actually be able to make some REAL progress.