Changes are coming in how we get letters, cards and mailed packages and where we can drop them off. The Postal Service, struggling with a huge deficit, proposes money-saving steps that include ending Saturday deliveries. Other changes could bring alternate-day pickups at blue street mailboxes. President Obama and a House subcommittee last week supported weekday-only mail service to save $3 billion a year, and also endorsed letting post offices profit from check-cashing fees, hunting license sales and other items beyond stamps and shipping supplies.

The White House and Congress are scrambling to help the agency reduce a $10-billion deficit. Mail volume has dropped 22 percent since 2006, and the fastest decline is in first-class letters and some business envelopes -- the most profitable type of mail. "We must do significantly more to return to profitability," Postmaster General Patrick said Donahoe said last week. His staff is studying 252 mail processing facilities for potential consolidation and reviewing 3,600 low-activity Post Offices for potential shutdown or scaled-back operation by private contractors.
Though the Postal Service is a self-financed and not run with taxpayer dollars, its employees and retirees draw benefits from federal workers' compensation, retirement and health-care accounts. That means its losses boost the federal deficit.

Pending ideas include letting postage rates climb beyond the rate of inflation. Another radical proposal would replace doorstep deliveries with locked mailboxes along curbs or at the end of driveways to save an estimated $3.5 billion annually by letting carriers serve more addresses.

Postal official says: "Short-term solutions will not help the Postal Service. We need long-term, comprehensive legislation." -- Patrick Donahoe, postmaster general

Congressman says: "You can only go so far before you force more and more people out of using the post office." -- Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Commentator says: "With the use of email and other electronic communication, it's clear the Postal Service has become a dinosaur: . . . Yet our government is intent on throwing more taxpayer dollars down the drain." -- Jack Cafferty, CNN commentator and blogger