Postal Service announces plan to end Saturday mail delivery - FOX19.com-Cincinnati News, Weather & Sports

The U.S. Postal Service isn't waiting any longer for permission from Congress to quit delivering mail on Saturdays. It says it's going ahead with plans to start five-day-a-week delivery in August.
    
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says the agency's financial condition is urgent, and the change will save about $2 billion a year.
    
Under the plan, letters would be delivered to homes and businesses only from Monday through Friday. Packages would continue to be delivered on Saturdays.
    
Mail would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays, and post offices now open on Saturdays would remain open.
    
The Postal Service has been advocating a shift to five-day delivery for several years, but Congress hasn't approved it.
    
Congress included a ban on five-day delivery in its appropriations bill. But because the federal government is now operating under a temporary spending measure, rather than an appropriations bill, Donahoe says the agency believes it can make the change itself.

He says the agency is asking Congress not to reimpose the ban when the spending measure expires on March 27.

"Eliminating Saturday service is short-sighted and self-defeating," said George White, President of Up With Paper in Mason. "There are much better alternatives that will lead to a stronger Postal Service, without significantly and negatively impacting the citizen mailer."

White is also chairman of the Greeting Card Association's Postal Affairs Committee.

"We hope that the Postal Service's announcement today will spur Congress to act to pass much needed reform legislation to ensure the long-term financial health of the Postal Service, and we will continue our education efforts with members of Congress as to what we believe is the best shape of that legislation and urge them to oppose this unilateral and potentially unlawful action by the Postal Service," he concluded in a statement sent to FOX19.

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