TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 2010
KLMNO
THE FED PAGE
Halting Saturday mail gets support
of those polled oppose closing post offices
by Ed O’Keefe and Jon Cohen
A majority of Americans sup-
port ending Saturday mail deliv- ery to help the U.S. Postal Service solve its financial problems, but most oppose shuttering local branches, according to a new Washington Post poll. The public support for moving
to five-day delivery might bolster a proposal to end six-day delivery as the mail agency faces declining mail volume and expects at least $238 billion in losses by 2020. Cutting Saturday delivery would save $3.3 billion in the first year and about $5.1 billion by 2020, Postmaster General John E. Pot- ter said Monday. But the changes would mean cutting the equiv- alent of 40,000 full- and part- time jobs through layoffs and at- trition, Potter said as he prepared to formally submit his proposals to postal regulators Tuesday. Under the plan, letter carriers would stop delivering mail to U.S. homes and businesses and would not pick up mail from blue collec- tion boxes on Saturdays. Post of- fices would stay open on Satur- days and mail would be delivered to post office boxes. Mail accepted at post offices Saturdays would be processed on Mondays. Express mail and remittance mail services would continue seven days a week. Potter’s proposal has the sup-
port of 71 percent of Americans, with most Democrats, Republi- cans and independents in favor,
64 percent
post offices and raising stamp prices.
ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG
Postmaster General John E. Potter says his proposal would mean cutting the equivalent of about 40,000 full- and part-time jobs.
according to the poll. The revisions would mean big
changes for how customers send and receive mail. Residential and business addresses would not re- ceive regular mail for three con- secutive days on weekends that include a Monday federal holiday, such as Presidents’ Day. Federal, state and local agencies would have to shift the delivery of checks and other benefits to en- sure they arrive before Saturday. The increased use of direct depos- its and debit cards should ease potential negative impact, postal officials said. Other mailers, in- cluding magazine publishers and gift companies, might also have to alter their schedules to ensure timely delivery. If the changes are approved,
Saturday delivery cuts probably would not occur before March 2011. The Postal Regulatory Com- mission would have to issue a nonbinding advisory opinion, a process that should take six months, Potter said. Congress would have to eliminate a rider in the annual appropriations bill
that mandates six-day delivery, a process that would probably be concluded by fall. The Postal Service would then wait six months before implementing any approved cuts, allowing time for customers to shift delivery sched- ules and for an advertising cam- paign to explain the changes, Pot- ter said. The Postal Service also would
cut about 26,000 full-time posi- tions through attrition and elimi- nate the equivalent of 13,000 part-time jobs, Potter said. The at- trition should come easily, since the average age of a letter carrier is 53, and about 10,000 carriers retire each year, he said. Most of the part-time workers carry the mail only one day a week as a sub- stitute for a full-time carrier. The Postal Service Board of
Governors approved the cuts last week, ordering Potter to submit the proposals to the commission Tuesday. Potter and others have said, however, that the board of governors might soon have to consider other ways to save mon- ey, including closing thousands of
Despite the popularity of the proposal to cut Saturday service, closing post offices is much less popular, according to the poll. Sixty-four percent of Americans oppose closing post offices, in- cluding their local branch, the poll shows. Those with college de- grees or more education divided about equally on this question (47 percent approval vs. 51 percent disapproval), and those with less formal education broadly op- posed the idea (29 percent vs. 70 percent). The idea of closing post offices hasn’t advanced be- yond discussion stages, but Potter and others have said the mail agency will consider closures if it can’t save money elsewhere. Fifty-five percent of poll re- spondents said they oppose rais- ing stamp prices. The idea earned majority support from liberals and those from households with annual income of $100,000 and higher, but 66 percent of conser- vatives oppose it. The Postal Service gets no tax-
payer funding, receiving revenue from the sale of postal products and services. Fifty-eight percent of Democrats said they support providing federal funds, if neces- sary, but a majority of Repub- licans and independents oppose such a move. As for the future of U.S. mail
delivery, nearly as many Amer- icans said they trust e-mail to send messages as reliably as they do the Postal Service. Overall, 43 percent said they think e-mail is more dependable; 47 percent said the Postal Service is. That’s up considerably from a 1994 poll when the Internet was in its in- fancy and the Postal Service had a better than 2 to 1 advantage. A
- ABC News poll
The public’s postal preferences
A new Washington Post poll suggests most Americans would support a U.S. Postal Service proposal to ease financial woes by ending Saturday deliveries.
Q: As you may know, the U.S. Postal Service recently announced that it is
End Saturday deliveries
Close some branches, including your local office
Provide additional federal funding
Raise stamp prices
44% 44% 35% 71%
NET
STRONGLY
43%
APPROVE DISAPPROVE
STRONGLY
19%
16%
16% 21%
e-mail or electronic mail system, or the U.S. post office?
All
43%
Age: 18-29 30-64 65+
55% 44% 22%
Q: Thinking ahead to the end of the
century, do you think regular post office mail will still be used by most people at the end of the century, or will it be outdated by then?
Outdated
34% 46%
37%
Q: Which do you trust more to send a message reliably: a computer
E-mail
USPS
47% 40% 45% 66%
Still be used
66% 29%
2% 3%
Depends
No opinion
SOURCE: This Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone March 23-26, among a random national sample of 1,000 adults, including users of conventional and cellular phones. Results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of three percentage points. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa.
majority of people younger than 30 put more faith in e-mail, and seniors overwhelmingly support traditional mail. Two-thirds of respondents said
they expect traditional “snail mail” to be obsolete by the end of the century; 29 percent said it will still be in use. Potter was asked to submit his plans to the commission via e-mail, at the reg-
anticipating billions of dollars in losses this year. Please tell me whether you would favor or oppose each of the following as a way to help the Postal Service solve its financial problems.
NET
55% 54% 64% 28%
S
A23
THE WASHINGTON POST
ulatory panel’s request. The poll was conducted by tele- phone March 23-26, among a ran- dom national sample of 1,000 adults, including users of conven- tional and cellular phones.
ed.okeefe@washpost.comcohenj@washpost.com
Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
As missions are added, Stratcom commander keeps focus on deterrence
deterrence while at the same time preserving our freedom of action in space and cyberspace,” Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, head of Strategic Command (Stratcom), said in last week’s appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Increasingly, however,
“W
Stratcom has been assigned heavy and varied responsibilities. It began with strategic deterrence, nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. In 2002 came space operations, including global command and control (those communication and early-warning satellites in space) and missile defense. Cyber operations recently were added, followed by combating weapons of mass destruction, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR aircraft), and finally information operations (IO). Chilton has the right background for such a multifaceted job. He’s an Air Force Academy
graduate, an engineer (master of science from Columbia University), test pilot (F-15), NASA astronaut (three space trips) and manager (operations for the international space station program). In 2007, when he was appointed Stratcom commander, he said at an Air Force Association symposium that he
e continue to strengthen and sharpen our focus on
those three focus areas: “cyberspace, space and global strike in the form of certain nuclear deterrence.” Last week, in defending
WALTER PINCUS
Fine Print
had “multiple missions, more than I could get my small mind around.” He said he had to prioritize — and he did. He looked at missile defense, ISRs, WMDs and IO and put them lower on the list. “What struck me right away is, we had no forces assigned to conduct operations in those areas,” he said. In short, Stratcom’s job was to advise: how to bring together missile-defense concepts of operations; with ISR, how best to use those high-demand/low numbers of aircraft; with WMD, help synchronize planning by the regional combatant commanders; and with IO, to “work in support of just about everybody around the world,” Chilton said. Then, he listed his top priorities. “There are three areas where we [Stratcom] actually have forces assigned . . . where I have three-star general officers who run our command and control centers and promulgate orders daily to the folks that work” for each of the generals. Chilton concluded by delineating
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Stratcom’s growing budget, Chilton kept his focus on those areas. As a former astronaut, he spoke extensively about the need for space awareness and a next-generation space-based surveillance system to prevent collisions between satellites, manned spacecraft and debris. In addition, he said, “I don’t think we can imagine military operations today without the advantages we have obtained from missile warning in space, global communications, GPS . . . navigation and tracking.” A new Cyber Command is in the works, awaiting confirmation of its nominated commander, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, currently the director of the National Security Agency. The new subcommand of Stratcom will combine offensive and defensive military cyber operations. Individual services — the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines — have created their own cyber commands, which Chilton will coordinate. Because so much depends on
Defense Department information networks, Chilton said protecting and improving them have become “interdependent imperatives — with new and expanded cyber capabilities.” But he reminded senators that Stratcom’s
responsibility is to “operate and defend military networks only,” not other government or civilian systems, which “fall under the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.” In the nuclear area, Chilton said his people had input in the 2011 Nuclear Posture Review, which has yet to be released. They also provided support for the arms-control negotiators whose work resulted in the announcement last week of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Chilton told the panel that his command will help design the strategy and plans that implement new limits in that agreement. Meanwhile, he said, Stratcom carries on some old business. Last June, it held Global Thunder 2009, what Chilton told senators was “the most extensive nuclear command, control and communications field exercise in over a decade.” It involved strategic submarines, aircraft sorties including B-52s, an intercontinental ballistic missile
test launch, and continuous airborne command and control. In August, Air Force Global
Strike Command became operational, showing new Air Force attention to its nuclear responsibilities in the wake of the September 2007 fiasco: B-52s took off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota with pilots and others unaware that they were carrying an armed air-launched cruise missile across the United States to Louisiana. Chilton has also become a student of deterrence.
“Since the end of the Cold War, the serious study of deterrence theory and strategy has been inadequate,” he said. An entire generation of policymakers, academics and military professionals skipped studying the evolution of deterrence. The preliminary work on the nuclear posture review and START “revealed this shortage of human capital,” he said. To fill the gap, Stratcom last summer held its first annual
Deterrence Symposium. Chilton gave the senators an interesting thought to ponder: “Throughout the 65-year history of nuclear weapons, no nuclear power has been conquered or even put at risk of conquest, nor has the world witnessed the globe-consuming conflicts of earlier history.” It’s a thought others in
government ought to ponder as they watch Iran and North Korea seek to develop nuclear capability.
pincusw@washpost.com
There’s a turf war at federal agencies that focus on uncovering corruption among U.S. border and immigration employees. Center for Investigative Reporting story on The Federal Worker, B3.
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