The United States Postal Service USPS

The Constitution gives Congress the power to establish post offices and post roads, and the postal network was the federal government's largest civilian operation for most of American history. Benjamin Franklin was named Postmaster General by the Continental Congress in 1775, and the Post Office Department became a cabinet department whose Postmaster General was a reliable patronage dispenser. After a 1966 collapse in Chicago left ten million pieces of mail stranded and a 1970 wildcat strike by postal workers, Congress passed the Postal Reorganization Act, signed August 12, 1970, which removed the department from the cabinet and created an independent government corporation, the United States Postal Service, beginning July 1, 1971.

The Postal Service delivers to about 170 million addresses in every state and territory, handling roughly 112 billion pieces of mail and packages a year through some 31,000 post offices and a fleet of more than 200,000 vehicles. It holds a legal monopoly on the delivery of letter mail and exclusive access to mailboxes, in exchange for a universal service obligation to serve every address at uniform prices, however remote. It also runs a law enforcement agency, the Postal Inspection Service, and an inspector general.

The USPS receives essentially no taxpayer money for its operations. It is expected to cover its costs from postage and package revenue, a model that has produced years of losses as first-class mail, its most profitable product, has fallen by about half since its 2001 peak while package volume grew. A 2006 law requiring it to prefund retiree health benefits decades in advance accounted for much of its reported losses until the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 repealed it. A Board of Governors appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate oversees it and selects the Postmaster General, and the independent Postal Regulatory Commission approves its prices. With about 640,000 employees, it is one of the largest civilian employers in the country.

The Postal Service's future is a recurring argument. A ten-year plan begun in 2021 slowed some delivery standards, raised postage several times, and consolidated processing centers, steps that its leadership said would stabilize finances and critics said degraded service. Proposals to privatize it, which would require an act of Congress, resurfaced in 2025, along with discussion of moving it under the Commerce Department. Its role in voting by mail has made its performance an election issue. Polls consistently show it among the most popular federal institutions.