House passes bipartisan Postal Service reform bill

A U.S. Postal Service truck.
(Image credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

The House on Tuesday evening passed a bipartisan reform bill that aims to save the U.S. Postal Service roughly $50 billion over the next 10 years.

In order to operate, the Postal Service relies on revenues from postage stamps and other services. Due to a drop in mail volume and a 2006 mandate that has the agency pre-funding retiree health-care costs for the next 75 years, the Postal Service has had 14 straight years of losses, and officials warned it would run out of cash by 2024 without congressional action. Under the Postal Reform Act, which passed with a vote of 342-92, $57 billion of the Postal Service's liabilities would be wiped clean, saving the agency another $50 billion over the next decade, The Washington Post reports.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.