Washington, DC -- Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY-17) issued the following statement condemning the U.S. Postal Service for singling out post offices for closure, and considering slashing hundreds of thousands of jobs, while failing to identify root causes for their massive debt.

“I am fed up with the continued bumbling from the Postal Service who are pinning their financial woes on seniors and working families in New York, and around the nation, rather than looking at the real reasons why they have lost money.  They argue locations targeted for closure have lost money, but for a department awash in billions of dollars in red ink, it is logical to assume there are few post offices actually making money nationwide.  The people of the Bronx, Rockland and Westchester Counties rely on their neighborhood Post Offices and it will be a hardship for many residents who are not able to easily travel to other locations.

“I find it puzzling that their plan to correct their financial woes is to make access to post offices more difficult and inconvenient.  They are charging more for services, but make them less accessible.  And they wonder why they continually lose business.  This is a business plan designed for failure. If they wish to essentially go out of business, they risk abandoning many of their most loyal and dependant customers.

“The Post Office needs to find ways to be more efficient, not be more secluded.  It needs to waste less, not deliver less often.  It needs to be more responsive to the people, not shutter their windows and move out of town.  I want the Post Office to succeed, and for the American people to have ample access to facilities, but I need to see that the Post Office is serious about correcting their own flaws.”

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