What is the latest postal news?

House Oversight Hearing with Postmaster General Steiner

The House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations held a March 17 hearing titled “Oversight of the U.S. Postal Service: The Financial Future Under Postmaster General Steiner.” Panelists included Postmaster General David Steiner and David Marroni, the Director of Physical Infrastructure at the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Chairman Sessions and Ranking Member Mfume emphasized their strong bipartisan working relationship on postal issues, which was reflected in their comments and questions to the panelists. Both remarked on the importance of the USPS to the U.S. economy and how it needs to be both viable and cost-effective. Both discussed the importance of cutting costs and increasing revenue. Ranking Member Mfume noted the USPS net loss of $9 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 and a loss of $1.3 billion in the first quarter of FY26.

Postmaster General Steiner’s priority issues raised for USPS included:

• USPS will be out of cash in less than 12 months;
• USPS cannot borrow more than $15 billion and allowing USPS to increase its borrowing authority would help;
• USPS can only invest its retirement in Treasury notes;
• USPS is mandated by law to deliver to every address, six days a week;
• USPS needs higher prices for both packing and mail;
• USPS network can compete with UPS and Amazon but we are not working at scale and must go after high-value packages over 5 pounds;
• USPS invested in local transportation and that has saved 17%;
• USPS is not allowed to manage its workers’ compensation claims.

Issues of concern raised by members included:

• The dire financial position of the USPS;
• Lengthy mail delivery delays;
• The unreliability of mail delivery and the erosion of trust;
• How to reduce costs;
• The needs of rural mail delivery service.

When asked about the USPS and President Trump’s remarks regarding USPS employees collecting information this year in advance of the 2030 census and members questioning the qualifications of USPS employees for such activities, Steiner responded that there was $200,000 being spent on two pilot projects and that so far this effort was limited. David Marroni with GAO floated the possible need for additional short-term funding for USPS from Congress this year to provide financial relief but there was no full-throated support from members on that possibility.

TNPA will continue to closely monitor the funding situation for the USPS and opportunities for our input.

No Postage Rate Increase in January 2026

On September 24, the USPS announced that there will be no postage price increase in January 2026, after a recommendation by Postmaster General David Steiner was accepted by the board of governors. A mid-year 2026 rate increase is still expected. Read their press release here.

New Postmaster General David Steiner

David Steiner began his new position as the 76^th Postmaster General in July of 2025. We at TNPA look forward to engaging with his office, alongside our coalition partners. Our organization believes that a stable and predictable postal rate, along with a clear understanding of the value of the nonprofit postal rate, remains critically important to continuing the valuable work of the nonprofit sector. As this NPR article details, a July 17 video message to employees of the United States Postal Service (USPS) by Postmaster General David Steiner stated that he did not support privatization and believes that the USPS should remain a “self-financing, independent entity of the executive branch.” While this statement is a reassuring message for those that do not support privatization, comments within the last few months by the Trump administration conveyed an openness to the idea. We will continue to closely track such statements and developments.

New Postal Legislation

On April 24 Congressman Sam Graves (R-MO) introduced H.R. 3004, legislation that would empower the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to make important changes to the decisions of the United States Postal Services (USPS).  Among the changes would be prohibiting the PRC from creating a rate system with no price caps, holding the USPS accountable for service performance, and limiting rate increases to once a year.

H.R. 3004, the USPS Services Enhancement and Regulatory Viability Expansion and Sustainability for the U.S. Act (USPS SERVES US ACT) takes aim at former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Delivering for America Plan (DFA). Launched in 2021, the DFA has boosted prices well above the rate of inflation AND in several cases slowed mail delivery as a means to reduce costs.

The legislation takes a practical approach by allowing penalties if the USPS doesn’t meet pricing, delivery, and financial goals. The legislation targets a number of areas, including:

• Holding the USPS accountable for improving efficiency by reducing rate authority if productivity is not improved each year.
• By prohibiting the PRC from creating a rate system with no price cap, the legislation attempts to constrain ever-increasing rate increases – well beyond the rate of inflation.
• In recent years having had three twice yearly rate increases. The legislation limits rate increases to once per year.
• Creates a new volume-encouraging objective for evaluating rate increases.
• Enables the USPS to invest retirement assets in private index funds such as those used by the federal Thrift Savings Fund.

Getting the legislation enacted will be no easy challenge, but it is badly needed. In this effort, as a member of the Keep US Posted coalition, TNPA will press for its adoption.

July 2025 Rate Increase

The summer postage rate increase took effect on July 13, 2025.

USPS rate authority is governed by a “rate cap,” which is ordinarily defined by pre-set parameters. This allows mailers to make reasonably good predictions of increases to come. The July increases will exceed those predictions due to the intervention of the Postal Regulatory Commission. In mid-February 2025, the PRC granted a USPS request to, in effect, get a refund from all mailers for the revenue it “lost” due to mailers taking advantage of USPS promotional discounts. The July rates will include the predicted cap amounts plus an additional amount attributable to the PRC-approved “refund.”

First Class  +8.0%

Marketing Mail Letters   +11.6%

Marketing Mail Flats  +13.6%

Periodicals  +9.4%

TNPA’s Position Statement on Postal Service Reform

Many nonprofit organizations rely on mail-based communications and fundraising to fulfill their charitable missions. We advocate for four key principles in postal reform:

1. Predictability and Affordability

The nonprofit sector requires stable, predictable postal rates tied to economic indicators like the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

2. Recognition of Public Service Value

The nonprofit postal rate is not merely a discount – it represents a long-standing public policy recognition that nonprofit organizations provide essential services that benefit society. Any postal reform must preserve this vital distinction and ensure that rate structures support, rather than impede, the nonprofit sector’s ability to serve communities.

3. Balanced Approach to Financial Sustainability

Reform must balance operational efficiency, cost control, and reasonable rate structures.

4. Universal Service Through Last-Mile Optimization

The USPS’s unique mandate to serve every American household must be protected and enhanced through strategic investment in last-mile delivery systems. This infrastructure ensures national cohesion and equitable access to information and services, particularly in rural and remote communities.

We support a comprehensive review of the postal service structure that considers the essential role of nonprofit mailers in serving the public good. The future viability of both the postal service and the nonprofit sector depends on establishing a sustainable, predictable rate management system and ensuring reliable delivery to all Americans.

What is the current situation?

The Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) granted the USPS a new rate authority in late 2020, allowing for hefty twice-annual increases like those in January and July 2024. The authority is an add-on to the previous system, which permitted increases only up to a ceiling determined by the annual consumer price index (CPI), a measure of inflation.

What does this mean for nonprofits?

The consequence of this new authority to increase rates has been accumulated increases between 15.7 and 19.6% in a mere 18-month period. The USPS will continue to have this authority for two or more years. When it has run its course, nonprofit mailers will have absorbed increases of up to 50-60% from start to finish.

How did we get here?

The 2006 Postal Reform Act limited price increases to a formula derived from the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Therefore, since 2006, aside from a small increase due to the Great Recession, postal rates have increased approximately at the rate of inflation, predictable as to both amount and timing.

Under the 2006 Act, the PRC was given the task of conducting a ten-year review of the law’s effectiveness. The PRC concluded that USPS’s poor financial health was due to the CPI cap, as opposed to a lack of operational efficiency or cost control. Therefore, it proposed a new formula, adopted in December 2020, which gave USPS new rate-making authority, permitting variable surcharges to be added to the CPI.

What can we do now?

TNPA strongly believes a long-term solution can only be found through structural reform of the USPS and its funding methods. The USPS cannot successfully be run as a business while incorporating substantial and obligatory public service missions into its operations. The ideal policy for the nonprofit sector—and all mailers—would be a return to the original goals of the Postal Reform Act of 2006: predictable rate increases in line with the rate of inflation.

Collectively, mailers took a logical first step. In late 2020, a coalition of mailers’ associations sued the PRC, asserting that it did not have the authority to raise rates above the 2006 Act’s CPI cap. TNPA contributed to this effort. In November 2021, the US Court of Appeals (DC Circuit) ruled against the mailers’ suit. The court ruled that the PRC acted within its authority, thus allowing the large rate increases beyond the CPI to continue.

With this disappointing court decision, the focus moved to Capitol Hill. H.R. 3076, the Postal Reform Act of 2022, passed the House in May 2021 and was working its way through the Senate. In March 2022, the Senate passed the bill without amending it to include pricing caps, and in April 2022, President Biden signed the measure into law.

While the legislation has several positive provisions, including shifting the large postal retiree healthcare cost off the Postal Service and to Medicare, where most retiree healthcare costs reside, it does not contain any language limiting future postal rate increases.

Our challenge now is to gain the enactment of legislation that would force the PRC to do a new, second study of the postal rate structure, taking into account the USPS’s freeing of the large retiree healthcare cost. It will be no easy task to enact this legislation, but a bipartisan group of seven Senators seems ready to push forward on this effort. Even if legislation mandating a new postal rate study were enacted, there is no guarantee that the PRC will conclude that the pricing structure should be fundamentally changed.

TNPA is part of Keep US Posted, an important coalition committed to a reliable, affordable USPS.