Debate Nirvana

“The Postal Service is the linchpin of a $1 trillion mailing and mail-related industry that employs more than 8 million Americans in fields as diverse as direct mail, printing, catalog companies, magazine and newspaper publishing and paper manufacturing," Maine senator Susan Collins said. "A healthy Postal Service is not just important to postal customers but also to our national economy." This quote shows that by cutting jobs, we will be hurting our economy farther.

Whatever savings do materialize will come primarily from cutting jobs  — a lot of them. Joann Weiner, an economist, says roughly 35,000 to 40,000 letter carrier jobs may have to be cut to make up for the projected but over-estimated $2 billion a year in savings. Richard Gallegos, vice president of the Fresno Area American Postal Workers Union and author of the Los Angeles Times article “The Truth About Saturday mail”, also agrees with Weiner, stating that 30,000-40,000 carriers will lose their jobs because of the cut. So many jobs are being cut, which hurts our economy. This in turn doesn’t help us in this recession but just puts us deeper into it.

A 2011 Postal Regulatory Commission study indicates many of the alleged savings of five-day delivery are illusory—that, as all the political bluster suggests, cutting Saturday mail is a better bargaining chip than it is an actual budget measure. This study indicated that the savings are not actually reflected. In fact, they showed that the “supposed” savings will not occur and in fact will lose money.

Representative Gerry O’Connolly, a Virginia Democrat who is a co-sponsor of the House bill to preserve Saturday delivery, said in an interview that the Postal Service has not substantiated its projected $2 billion in annual savings from ending Saturday delivery.

In addition, financial experts, Jennifer Karls and Mark Giordio, analyzed the statistics concerning the amount of money saved. The amount saved, which they projected to be $2 billion, is actually much lower. A more recent and accurate study that the two experts conducted has proven that the total savings was only 20% of the projected amount. This is easily outweighed by the money that would be used to pay post office workers for overtime as a result of cutting Saturday mail service.  

The postmaster general proposes trading 17% of service for 2% in savings — an irrational business plan. Indeed, when the USPS asked the agency's overseer, the Postal Regulatory Commission, in 2011 to support ending six-day delivery, this illogic was one of the factors cited by the commission in declining to endorse the plan. "I am disappointed by the Postal Service's announcement today regarding its plans to transition to a five-day mail delivery schedule in August. This plan is completely illogical, because it doesn’t work! We are already in a depression and we need to focus on getting out of it, and this plan is not the way we will succeed," said Senator Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat, who has been working on a plan to save the postal service with Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican.

Postal Service began to question whether it even technically fell under Congress's appropriation bill, because the service is an independent agency that doesn't receive an annual taxpayer subsidy, but instead is reimbursed by Congress for certain relatively small areas, including delivering mail to the blind and overseas voters.The agency's reimbursement for those services is between $80 million and $100 million a year, he said, while the Postal Service's annual operating budget is about $73 billion—most of it raised through sales of stamps and other postal products.

Sen. Tom Carper (D., Del.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, which oversees postal operations, expressed disapproval Wednesday of ending Saturday service."I am disappointed by the Postal Service's announcement today," he said. "For nearly three decades, it has been the clear intent of Congress that the Postal Service provide most communities with six days of mail delivery."Rep. Gerry Connolly (D., Va.) said Mr. Donahoe lacked the constitutional authority to eliminate Saturday delivery and asked the Postal Service to provide legal justification for the action.The Association of Magazine Media, which represents consumer magazines, said it was taken by surprise. "While we have actively participated in conversations around postal reform, and in particular, five-day delivery, we did not expect the USPS would act unilaterally, without congressional approval, and we await Washington's reaction and more details," said its president, Mary Berner, in a statement

In the last fiscal year, the post office lost $15.9 billion in the last year. The Postal Service has said ending a day of delivery each week would save a forecasted $3.3 billion in the first year and about $5.1 billion annually by 2020 according to the New York Times. In addition, many other countries have already switched to a 5 day delivery plan and have proven the fact that we will save money if we switch. Australia, Canada, and Sweden are just a few countries that have 5 day delivery schedules. According to a study done by the Australian Mail Services, when they had 6 day deliveries they lost an average of $1.3 billion. But, when they switched to five days, they made an average profit of $2.1 billion. Clearly, we will save money as other countries have.

A survey conducted by the New York Times found that about 7 in 10 Americans say they would favor the change as a way to help the post office deal with billions of dollars in debt. As the agency tries to adjust to the digital age, only three in 10 people under age 45 say they use it all the time. Patrick R. Donahoe, the postmaster general, said the poll confirms that Americans support the Postal Service’s plans for getting back on solid financial footing. “The results show Americans understand and accept that moving to a five-day delivery schedule is part of the solution,” Mr. Donahoe said. The telephone poll was conducted nationally from June 22 through June 25 among 990 adults, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Clearly, citizens in America all support this change because they understand how beneficial it is.

79.1% of people use email while only 29.9% use direct mail. The use of direct mail is slowly declining as our statistics show, which means that the USPS does not need to be open full time. Keeping it open on Saturdays is simply a waste of money.  As well, using email is a lot cheaper, especially for small businesses which need to ship up to thousands of items at a time. Nowadays, most people use their emails to send letters to their friends. Saturday is the lightest mail delivery day by volume and many businesses are closed on Saturdays, according to USPS.

Since 2006, overall mail circulation has decreased by 20% to 25% while first class mail is down by one-third. Judge, let’s compare the number of pieces of mail delivered during the weekdays versus Saturdays. According to United States Postal Service, more mail is delivered any during than on Saturdays. Specifically, an average of 563 million pieces of mail were delivered daily for the weekdays, and only 115 million pieces of mail were delivered on Saturdays. Approxiametely one-fifth of all mail.

Usually, the USPS works six days a week. When we take out Saturday, USPS will be mailing five days a week. We have evidence to prove the substantial difference that taking out one day helps our pollution levels.