A bipartisan bill that would bar U.S. Postal Service executives from receiving bonuses until on-time mail delivery levels reach 95% cleared the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week and could advance to the full Senate when lawmakers return next month, underscoring growing congressional pressure on the agency as service complaints and financial losses continue to draw attention.

Postmaster General David Steiner, ahead of the committee vote, privately urged senators to reject the measure, arguing in a letter that freezing bonuses would be counterproductive.

The No Bonuses for Bad Service Act

The legislation, known as the No Bonuses for Bad Service Act, is sponsored by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut). It would prohibit the USPS Board of Governors from approving any additional compensation for the postmaster general or the deputy postmaster general during any fiscal year in which the Postal Service fails to meet or exceed a 95% on-time delivery rate for all First-Class and standard mail.

Meanwhile, the full Alabama delegation in the House introduced companion legislation in late July — the PERFORM Act — that would also tie the postmaster general's compensation to the agency's mail delivery and financial performance.

Declining Service Performance

The Postal Service asserts it has achieved steady service improvements in 2025 through measures including aligning staffing to workflow, implementing process improvements, and retraining at the facility level. This renewed emphasis on reliability accompanied a reorganization of the regional transportation network, which necessitated loosening some delivery standards in rural areas — a move that drew complaints about slower mail delivery in those regions.

Steiner stated during a Friday Board of Governors meeting that the organization has enhanced service performance by better leveraging its network.

Nevertheless, on-time mail performance continues to deteriorate. According to the agency's annual report, the Postal Service missed its on-time targets across all eight mail delivery categories in fiscal year 2025, with none reaching the 95% threshold. Single-piece First-Class mail, which is scheduled for three-to-five-day delivery, was delivered on time only 72.7% of the time. Marketing mail, periodicals, and pre-sort First-Class overnight mail each posted a 93% on-time score.

By comparison, in fiscal year 2022, USPS delivered 91% of First-Class mail on time and 93.3% of marketing mail on time, according to a progress report tied to the agency's 10-year restructuring and modernization plan.

Mounting Financial Losses

Frustration over late deliveries has intensified alongside the agency's ongoing cash-flow problems. The Postal Service has lost $25 billion over the past three years. On Friday, it reported a $2.5 billion third-quarter loss, an improvement from the $3.1 billion loss recorded in the same quarter the prior year.

Hawley's Campaign Against Late Mail

Sen. Hawley has been among the most vocal critics of delayed mail delivery, championing rural constituents who report that years of delays and missing mail impose financial hardships — such as missed bills and paychecks — and create health risks when prescription medications arrive late.

In April, a large cache of undelivered mail was discovered in a vacant lot near St. Louis, with many postmarks showing the letters were destined only for local addresses rather than cross-country delivery.

At a June 24 hearing, Hawley pressed Steiner on why postmasters general had collectively received more than $2 million in bonuses over the past decade while both delivery and financial performance declined. Steiner, who assumed office one year ago, has already received a $170,000 bonus.

"Your targets for on-time delivery in my state, which were not good to begin with, are just in the 90s, meaning you could miss it 10% of the time and give yourself an A grade. But start looking there in 2024, 2025. You're hitting your on-time delivery targets 76% of the time — maybe. That means fully a quarter of the time, best case scenario, people's mail in my state is not being delivered to them on time," Hawley said.

Steiner acknowledged those metrics as unacceptable but maintained that the postal operator is producing improved service results nationwide.

Hawley has also launched an investigation into systemic delivery failures and abandoned mail in Missouri, suggesting that some problems may stem from criminal activity.

Inspector General Audit Findings

A 2025 audit by the USPS Office of Inspector General uncovered more than 2.5 million delayed mail pieces at the St. Louis Processing and Distribution Center — the largest volume of delayed mail recorded since the OIG began conducting field operations reviews in 2021. The report attributed the backlog to systemic issues including faulty package scanning, inadequate reporting of delayed mail incidents, and understaffing. These problems resulted in mail from commercial mailers not being sorted to the correct routes at two processing plants and seven delivery units across the St. Louis metropolitan area.

A separate recent audit of Kansas City facilities found nearly 100,000 delayed pieces of mail during a three-day inspection.

An October analysis by Postal, a virtual mailbox and compliance service, found that more than 542,000 pieces of mail were reported lost or missing between 2022 and 2024. Over 150,000 of those reports involved mail disappearing after delivery — approximately 350 incidents per day — suggesting a significant prevalence of porch piracy.

Steiner's Pushback

Steiner attempted to preempt the anti-bonus legislation. In a July 31 letter first reported by Axios, he wrote: "I was fortunate enough to be quite successful in my career in the private sector, so any compensation action you take against me will have little effect," while warning that such a policy would undermine the Postal Service's ability to attract qualified executives going forward.

"Picking any single performance metric to punish management would constitute Congress elevating achievement of that metric at the expense of other important metrics," Steiner continued. "In order to achieve our mandates of providing reliable service in an efficient and cost-effective manner, we must necessarily balance service and cost considerations. In this case service performance is singled out, which would have the near inevitable impact of increasing costs because almost any action to improve service comes with added cost — increasing transportation, work hours, equipment, and people."

Steiner further argued that the bill is unnecessary because management is already focused on service improvements. "Our service scores have improved and will continue to improve, and service is already a part of every manager's annual goals. That said, we are acting prudently to improve service as we leverage the opportunities presented by our new network to not only enhance service reliability, but also our operational precision and efficiency, a process that necessarily takes time," he explained.

House Companion: The PERFORM Act

The PERFORM Act in the House would prohibit a performance-based bonus for the postmaster general if, during the preceding fiscal year, the Postal Service fails to meet nationwide service performance targets, reports a net loss, or receives an adverse opinion or disclaimer in its financial audit.

"The American people don't get bonuses for failure, and neither should the Postmaster General. The PERFORM Act ends the practice of rewarding poor performance and makes clear that leadership must earn incentive pay by delivering results — not excuses," said Rep. Dale Strong (R-Alabama) in a news release announcing the proposal.

"If the U.S. Postal Service were a private sector operation, it would have filed for bankruptcy years ago. Further, if a CEO's tenure saw an average annual net loss of $10 billion while service standards continued to decline, company leadership would be standing in the unemployment line — not collecting performance bonuses," Strong added.