Senate Democrats pushing legislation to save six-day mail delivery, improve rural mail service

Legislation being pushed by Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Gary Peters (Mich.) aims to protect rural mail and save six-day delivery, Bernie Becker reports for The Hill. The bill "would speed up the mail delivery times that USPS has rolled back in recent years, make the current six-day delivery standards permanent and stop the Postal Service from closing any more mail processing centers for two years."

"USPS, which has lost tens of billions of dollars in recent years, has said its cost-cutting moves—which include reducing hours at rural post offices and shuttering dozens of processing centers—were needed to stay afloat," Becker writes. "Following those changes, long-distance mail now arrives within three to five days less than two-thirds of the time.

Heitkamp, who said she was skeptical that the Postal Service’s service reductions had been all that effective to the agency’s bottom line, told Becker, “It always seems like rural America takes the brunt of these decisions.” (Read more)