Amazon to cut postal service; time to end the USPS
- Thread starter Diogenes
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T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
We can't end the USPS. There is a Constitutional provision that the government provide postal service to all addresses.
The Constitution and the Postal System | Constitution Center
President-elect Donald Trump has revived talk from his previous term of moving to privatize the United States Postal System. To be sure, such a process would be complicated and would likely require an act of Congress.
constitutioncenter.org
Congress created the modern USPS via the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 and can change or repeal its governing statutes at any time. Key levers include:
- Borrowing authority from the U.S. Treasury — capped by law (currently ~$15 billion). The Postal Service has warned (as recently as March 2026) that without congressional action to raise this limit, it will run out of cash within about a year and be unable to deliver the mail.
- Rate-setting and pricing flexibility — Congress (via the Postal Regulatory Commission and statutes) controls how much the USPS can charge for stamps and services. The Postmaster General has said raising the first-class stamp from 75¢ to ~95¢ would largely fix controllable losses.
- Mandates and burdens — The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) forced the USPS to pre-fund retiree health benefits 75 years in advance (a requirement no other agency or private company faces). This created the “crisis” narrative used to justify cuts or privatization pushes. Congress could repeal, modify, or add similar burdens.
- Service obligations — Universal service (same price everywhere, six-day delivery in many areas, post-office closures restricted) is set by statute. Congress can loosen or tighten these.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress (not the President) the exclusive power “to establish Post Offices and post Roads.” Any major change — privatization, abolition, merger into another department, or restructuring that affects funding — requires an act of Congress.
- Congress could simply refuse to raise the borrowing limit → USPS hits its debt ceiling and cannot pay bills or deliver mail.
- It could impose new unfunded mandates or price caps that make operations unsustainable.
- It could repeal the USPS’s authority to retain its own revenues or force it into liquidation.
- Inaction on the current financial trajectory (declining first-class mail volume + fixed costs) would achieve the same result.
Bottom line: The USPS is not funded like the EPA or Department of Education, so there is no single appropriations bill Congress can slash to kill it overnight. But because Congress wrote every law governing its existence, revenue model, borrowing, and obligations, Congress absolutely has the power to defund it — or keep it alive. It just requires passing (or refusing to pass) legislation rather than a routine budget vote.