{"id":2536,"date":"2026-03-17T23:23:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/nearly-1-stamps-lawmakers-contemplate-how-to-avert-usps-financial-crisis-government-executive\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T23:23:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:23:21","slug":"nearly-1-stamps-lawmakers-contemplate-how-to-avert-usps-financial-crisis-government-executive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/nearly-1-stamps-lawmakers-contemplate-how-to-avert-usps-financial-crisis-government-executive\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly $1 stamps? Lawmakers contemplate how to avert USPS financial crisis – Government Executive"},"content":{"rendered":"

The postmaster general proposed that prices for stamps, currently 78 cents, could be increased to between 90 and 95 cents in response to financial pressures on the agency. <\/span> Justin Sullivan \/ Getty Images <\/span><\/p>\n

Stay Connected
Sean Michael Newhouse<\/a><\/span><\/span>
Officials said at a hearing Tuesday that tradeoffs in services may be necessary, as the U.S. Postal Service faces the prospect of running out of money within the next year.\u00a0
\u201cWe would hope that this is the beginning of the ultimate end of the ongoing [postal] crises that we have all witnessed far too long,\u201d said Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform panel\u2019s Government Operations Subcommittee.\u00a0
In his testimony, Postmaster General David Steiner warned that USPS could reach a financial cliff as soon as fall 2026. As a response, he floated reducing the postal agency\u2019s mandate to deliver mail six days per week or raising stamp prices to 90 to 95 cents. Stamps currently are 78 cents, having been increased six times since 2021<\/a>.\u00a0
\u201cIf you want the same number of delivery days and post offices, we can do that, but someone has to pay for it. If you want to have a discussion about reducing services, we can do that,\u201d Steiner said. \u201cBut there’s one thing we can’t do, and that is the status quo, and we don’t have a lot of time.\u201d
David Marroni, a senior official at the Government Accountability Office, testified that any fix to the USPS\u2019 finances will likely require congressional action, calling the postal agency\u2019s current business model “unsustainable.”
\u201cThere is a fundamental tension between the level of services that Congress expects USPS to provide and the revenue that USPS can reasonably be expected to generate,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething has to change.\u201d\u00a0
Steiner argued that an \u201ceasy action\u201d Congress could take is to raise the USPS\u2019 $15 billion statutory debt limit, which the agency\u2019s Board of Governors has previously requested<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0
\u201cIncreasing our borrowing authority buys us time, time that we can use to best determine what the Postal Service should do to best serve the American public,\u201d the postmaster general said.\u00a0
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, the subcommittee\u2019s chairman, however, emphasized that lawmakers would need more information before taking such an action.\u00a0
\u201cCongress needs to have confidence not only that [USPS will] be able to pay it back, but that they’re on the right road to achieve financial security,\u201d he said. \u201cFor Congress to consider this request, the Postal Service must also prove that they have exhausted their [other] options already.\u201d\u00a0
Throughout the hearing, Steiner contended that USPS has generated savings through implementation of Delivering for America, a 10-year modernization plan initiated by his predecessor in 2021 that generally entails slowing some delivery and increasing the prices of certain products. Lawmakers from both parties and mail stakeholders have called for an end to the plan, arguing that it has worsened performance without achieving financial benefits.\u00a0
Former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy predicted that Delivering for America would enable the USPS to break even by fiscal 2023, which did not happen. The postal agency has remained in the red, most recently experiencing a net loss of $9 billion in fiscal 2025<\/a>.\u00a0
Steiner testified that USPS is \u201cnot going to save our way out of the hole that we\u2019re in.\u201d\u00a0
\u201cI don\u2019t expect to [break even] anytime soon [based] on the current path that we are on,\u201d he said.\u00a0 <\/use> <\/svg>
Share<\/b> <\/b>your<\/b> <\/b>experience<\/b> with us:<\/b>
Sean Michael Newhouse: <\/b>snewhouse@govexec.com<\/a>, Signal: seanthenewsboy.45<\/span>
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source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The postmaster general proposed that prices for stamps, currently 78 cents, could be increased to between 90 and 95 cents in response to financial pressures on the agency. Justin Sullivan \/ Getty Images Stay Connected Sean Michael Newhouse Officials said at a hearing Tuesday that tradeoffs in services may be necessary, as the U.S. Postal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}