The USPS funding crisis is bigger than the election, experts warn

These include threats from competitors and customers like Amazon, UPS and FedEx, billions of dollars in debt, costly pension and health benefits and the shift toward digital communication and marketing.Although it's evident the Postal Service needs financial relief, numerous experts said getting through the election isn’t really at issue.Even USPS itself, which initially expected to run out of money by the end of September, adjusted its forecast to either March or October 2021, thanks to the surge of pandemic-related shipping, which has enabled it to weather the pandemic better than expected.Plus, it currently has more than $14 billion in cash and a $10 billion line of credit under the CARES Act. It’s also possible Trump, who has sent mixed messages regarding funding USPS, will agree to provide an additional $25 billion in bailout money.While USPS is a government agency with federal employees, it doesn’t get taxpayer money and instead depends on commercial activities like selling postage, products and services to self fund.Its current resources are more than enough to enable it to deliver ballots and handle any election-related mail, according to Kevin Kosar, an executive at the R Street Institute think tank who spent over 10 years covering postal issues for the Congressional Research Service.“Trump has confused a lot of people by conflating the post office’s situation with voting by mail.