The Obama administration proposed giving the U.S. Postal Service an extra three months to make a $5.5 billion payment for retiree health care. The Postal Service had said that they would probably default on the payment and could possibly run out of money to operate this winter. The administration says that it plans to announce another plan that would help avoid a shutdown. The Postal Service has proposed shutting down 3,700 locations and laying off 120,000 workers in order to close a $10 billion deficit. Unions say that they are opposed to the layoffs, and that they gave billions of dollars in concessions so that layoffs would not occur. Mail volume has decreased by 22% since 2006.
See "White House to Propose Plan to Help Postal Service", Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, September 6, 2011