Postal Service chief warns Congress of looming cash crisis

Postal Service chief David Steiner told senators on Wednesday that the U.S. Postal Service was out of cash and borrowing from employees’ retirement funds to keep operating. He said the agency had nearly $31 billion in cumulative defaults through the end of fiscal 2025 and just $8.9 billion in unrestricted cash on hand as of May 31, 2026.

Steiner delivered his prepared testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at a 9:30 a.m. hearing in SD-342 in Washington. He said the Postal Service has a broken business model and warned that its current approach only pushes financial burdens into the future, leaving less flexibility when the bills come due. The hearing focused on declining mail volumes, rising costs and the capital investment the agency still needs.

Since 2007, USPS has lost money every fiscal year but one, accumulating $118 billion in net losses, the Government Accountability Office found on March 17, 2026. GAO also found that USPS preserved cash partly by borrowing the maximum $15 billion from the U.S. Treasury and by not making, or only partially making, required retiree health and pension payments. The postmaster general warned USPS could run out of cash in early 2027.

First-Class Mail on-time performance fell from 91% in fiscal 2022 to about 86% in fiscal 2025, even after USPS revised its standards in fiscal 2022 from a 1-to-3-day delivery window to a 1-to-5-day window, GAO found. A separate GAO report said USPS could run out of cash as early as fiscal 2026 if it made all required payments toward unfunded liabilities in full.

In 2022, the Senate passed the Postal Service Reform Act by a 79-19 vote. The law canceled $57 billion of missed payments and provided roughly $50 billion in relief over a decade, but the Postal Regulatory Commission’s May 21, 2026 financial analysis still found continued net losses and a large net deficit.

USPS published a proposed rule involving mail-in ballots on June 2, 2026, prompting the NAACP and the Legal Defense Fund to move the next day to enforce a settlement requiring timely delivery of election mail. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi also wrote Steiner on June 3 seeking answers about possible political pressure and whether the rule could be implemented before the November 3 election. At the same time, the National Association of Letter Carriers, which represents 295,000 current and retired delivery workers, entered 60-day mandatory mediation in late May after its prior contract expired.