Slideshow: U.S. Postal Service then and now

Orlando / Getty Images

Take a look at the how the USPS has evolved since its beginning.

Launch slideshow

NEW YORK -- The United States Postal Service says Americans have already voted with their wallets about the decision to cut delivery of first-class mail on Saturdays: package deliveries are up, but letter volume has dropped off a cliff, a victim of our growing reliance on email and social media.

But you wouldn’t know that from the reaction of customers at a Manhattan post office Wednesday. Whether because they perceive the new delivery schedule to be an inconvenience or because they feel like they've lost another vital service during tough economic times, people still want their Saturday mail.

For Hela Borer, who dropped by a USPS branch on the Upper West Side shortly after the news broke, the move is a raw deal for Americans who work long or unusual shifts on weekdays. Borer, who didn't specify what she did for a living but said she works "crazy hours" Monday through Friday, argued she has little opportunity to send or read letters before the end of the business week.

"I never get a chance to look over my mail," Borer said. "If they don't deliver on Saturday, they just lost one customer."

A totally unscientific online poll by NBC News shows something different, however. About 62 percent of the respondents say they could not care less if the postman showed up at their mailbox on Saturday. Emails and Facebook messages don't take a day off, after all.

Even though Borer can use Saturdays to sort through mail that's accumulated over the previous five days, the new delivery schedule irks her.

Isaac Pontier said that USPS's plan is a major inconvenience for people who look forward to snail mail correspondence during weekends, no matter the pervasiveness of digital communication tools.

"It's just not okay. It's just not fair for people like me," Pontier said. "The weekends are the only days I have off!"

Patrick R. Donahoe, postmaster general and CEO, said at a Wednesday morning news conference that the agency will continue to deliver packages, mail-order medicine and express mail on Saturdays. But letters, bills, cards, and catalogs won't get to their recipients until Monday.

"The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America's changing mailing habits," Donahoe said at the conference.

The cost-cutting move is slated to save the cash-strapped agency $2 billion a year.

Savings or not, Sharon Lynch said she was "incredibly disappointed" with the new delivery policy, which is scheduled to take effect in August.

"Every time I come to use the post office, I hear they're taking away a service," Lynch said at New York City's historic James Farley Post Office.

Tamiko Bell-Bacchus, 37, struck a more mournful note on her way out of the city landmark.

"Everyone grows up with mail delivery. It's so commonplace," Bell-Bacchus said. "But I guess now that most people use email and everything is electronic, the post office has become the dinosaur of our age."

The whole argument may be moot, though, if Congress doesn't agree to the change. It's not clear whether the USPS can unilaterally change its delivery schedule. Donahoe said he feels that the agency, which is independent but overseen by Congress, can get lawmakers to approve the changes.

"We think we are on good footing with this," he said.

The cost of sending a letter in the United States will go up by a penny next year, the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service said on Thursday.

"Forever" stamps will cost 46 cents starting Jan. 27, the agency said. Consumers can use those stamps to mail one-ounce letters anywhere in the country. As the name implies, they are always valid, even after stamp prices rise.

The Postal Service will also offer a new, global Forever stamp starting next year, which customers can use to send letters anywhere in the world for a set price of $1.10.

The struggling mail agency is facing a cash crisis. Mail volumes have plummeted as Americans turn to online communications, and the agency has defaulted twice in recent months on payments required by Congress.

The agency relies on the sale of stamps and other products, rather than taxpayer dollars, to fund its operations.

Domestic stamp prices rose by 1 cent last January to 45 cents.

Consumers can purchase the 45-cent Forever stamps until the new price takes effect in January.

The global Forever stamp would boost the cost to mail a letter by 5 cents for most international destinations. The cost to send a letter to Canada or Mexico using a global Forever stamp would rise by 25 cents. The cost to mail a postcard also will go up by 1 cent to 33 cents.

Postal officials have asked Congress to allow the agency to raise stamp prices beyond inflation, end Saturday mail delivery and make other changes. The agency lost $5.2 billion in the period from April to June.

Lawmakers have been grappling for more than a year with ways to help the Postal Service return to profitability, but have yet to agree on how to revamp the agency. Congress is expected to take up postal legislation after the Nov. 6 election. 

Erik S. Lesser / EPA

Letter carrier Letonya Lawson makes her deliveries in Avondale Estates, Ga., this week. Despite a default, no interruption in postal service is expected.

Neither rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night -- nor, apparently, a $5.5 billion default -- will keep the U.S. Postal Service from moving the mail.

The agency confirmed Wednesday that it has defaulted on a payment, mandated by Congress, to a health benefit trust fund managed by the Treasury. The agency said it will miss a similar payment due Sept. 30.

The default will have “no material effect” on its operations, according to a Postal Service spokesman.

“We will continue to deliver the mail, pay our employees and suppliers and meet our other financial obligations,” the spokesman said.

The default is a milestone in the long-running political dance between Congress and Postal Service managers over how to finance the delivery of mail to 151 million addresses, nearly 40 percent of the world's "snail mail" volume. Though its Capitol Hill critics complain that Postal Service should be made to operate “more like a business,” Congress has created a set of rules that all but guarantee billion-dollar losses.

Those losses are almost entirely the result of the now-defaulted “pre-funding” requirement for retiree health insurance and other accounting charges, according to Ron Bloom, an investment adviser at Lazard who has advised the Postal Service on restructuring.

“No other company in America, public or private, has that obligation,” he said. “The Postal Service is losing about $75 million a month from delivering the mail. That's a problem, but a different problem than the billions we hear about. If we raise the price of a stamp by half a penny, they would be breaking even.”

The Postal Service faces other constraints. It is banned from setting up retail outlets, for example, that could generate profits to help subsidize delivery costs.  Worse, it is barred by Congress from charging the full cost of providing the service it is required to deliver.

“On the one side, (Congress) says, ‘We want to you deliver a letter from the corner of Alaska to the far corner of Hawaii and we want to you do it for 45 cents,' which has nothing to do with the price of what it takes to get there,” said Bloom. “On the other hand, (Congress) says, ‘We want to you break even.’”

Beyond the crushing burden of prefunding benefits, the Postal Service is grappling with a long-term decline in the volume of first-class mail -- 4 to 5 percent year -- as more communication shifts to the Internet.  It’s not unlike a transition in the 1970s, when the decline of railroads forced the Postal Service to develop a new infrastructure of sorting facilities, part of the reason Congress chose to establish the service as an independently funded agency, according to Robert John, a Columbia Journalism School professor who has written about the history of the service.

“They built these large sorting centers that made it possible to distribute first-class mail in a day or two,” he said. “That’s one of the ways they could save money. They could no longer use all the facilities that they built out.  Do we, as a matter of policy, need to get catalogs, advertising -- so-called junk mail -- in one day? Could we get it in three days? But then what about Social Security checks?”

As revenues from first-class letters have declined, the volume of package deliveries has grown. Though it competes with private delivery services like UPS and FedEx, those carriers don't deliver to remote areas that are less profitable. So they contract with the Postal Service to get the job done.

That means looming Postal Service cutbacks could create economic hardships for those carriers -- and the thousands of small  businesses that depend on them.  

“If I were at Fed Ex, I would be extremely worried about the situation,” said John. “It’s bad news for small business and it's bad news to the American economy."

More recently, Congress has sidelined the Postal Service's efforts to cut costs. The agency this year unveiled a five-year plan to reach profitability that, in addition to closing low-volume facilities, would cut Saturday delivery and eliminate the requirement to prefund employee benefits.

In April, the Senate approved an $11 billion cash infusion to avert a default, but delayed many of the proposed cuts for at least a year. The House is deadlocked on a bill calling for deeper cuts, in part due to opposition from lawmakers from rural districts where the cuts would hit hardest.

Congress has come to the financial rescue repeatedly in the past, said John, and he thinks it's likely that lawmakers will do so again. The political fallout from inconveniencing millions of voters in sparsely populated areas will likely override philosophical opposition to what the agency's critics see as a "bailout."   

"I would think that congressmen, who for principled reasons are opposed to government intervention and who happen to represent rural districts, are going to be like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis when it comes to privatizing the post office."

Even if Congress acts this year, which isn’t expected, the projected annual savings of $2.1 billion wouldn't kick in until late 2014. The Postal Service has projected a record $14.1 billion loss for this year. 

While some cuts seem inevitable, Bloom cautions that they could end up doing more harm than good.

"Clearly, you've got to right-size the network because first-class is in long-term decline," he said. "But the problem with all network companies is if you cut the network too fast, you accelerate the very problem you're trying to fix."

More money and business news:

• Why nothing gets done in August, and why that's OK
• Supporters call for 'Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day'
• Housing thaw? Prices may have bottomed last winter
• Video: Seafood restaurants may be pulling bait-and-switch
• Sign up for our Business newsletter

Follow NBCNews.com business on Twitter and Facebook