OPINION:
“Steiner must stop the bleeding at USPS before taxpayers stuck with bill” (Web, Dec. 4) highlights the serious financial challenges facing the U.S. Postal Service and rightly calls out the “Delivering for America” plan as an expensive disaster with limited results.
Among the plan’s many failures is that it harms rural communities and individuals and businesses who call rural America home.
While USPS leadership is working to stabilize finances, it has chosen to do so with worse and less service in small-town America. Across rural Missouri, delivery speeds have deteriorated well below historic norms. Farmers, seniors and small-business owners increasingly face unacceptable delays in receiving time-sensitive mail, prescriptions and essential documents.
That is why the Missouri Farm Bureau has joined members of our congressional delegation in urging USPS leadership to halt the Regional Transportation Optimization plan, the central pillar of “Delivering for America.” Under the plan, any post office more than 50 miles from a regional hub is limited to once-a-day mail pickup and delivery. Compare that with the consistent morning and afternoon service all Americans expect.
The Postal Service’s own regulator has warned that these changes could result in “significant negative impacts on rural communities.”
Any business owner knows that poor service lowers demand; it doesn’t increase it. Yet such flawed logic is being used to justify sweeping operational changes, and recent audits reinforce these concerns. A USPS Office of Inspector General audit of the St. Louis Processing and Distribution Center in Missouri found millions of pieces of mail delayed because of staffing shortages, missed clearance times, inadequate supervision and poor equipment maintenance. These failures persisted despite earlier warnings.
From May 2024 to April 2025, more than half of outbound truck trips from the facility were late, canceled or unscheduled, contributing to widespread delivery disruptions and eroding accountability.
The Postal Service’s universal service obligation is not symbolic; it is a statutory mandate. All Americans, including those in rural communities, depend on reliable mail for medications, business transactions, tax documents, retirement checks, ballots and more.
We support thoughtful reforms that strengthen the Postal Service’s financial footing, but the agency must protect rural service standards. We call on the USPS to pause the Regional Transportation Optimization plan and engage rural stakeholders to ensure savings do not come at the expense of service for those who need it most.
GARRETT HAWKINS
President, Missouri Farm Bureau
Appleton City, Missouri
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