Democrats Press Postmaster General to Testify Before Congress
At the same time, the Postal Service has said in financial filings that it has enough liquidity to fund operations through at least August 2021. Efforts to curtail excess capacity at the Postal Service because of declining mail volumes aren’t new, said Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at R Street Institute, a free market think tank, who previously analyzed postal policy at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
“There’s not too many people who know postal policy who would dispute that the postal service has excess capacity,” Mr. Kosar said, noting that mail volumes have declined amid a long-running shift to digital communications. “Sorting machines, post offices, mail sorting facilities, blue collection boxes, those are all part of the mix,’’ he said. “They’ve all been getting reduced over a many-year period.”
But Mr. Kosar said the Postal Service faces other challenges ahead of the November election, including the potential impact of Covid-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, on postal employees and a flood of parcels due to the surge in online shopping because of the pandemic.
