I heard this morning (or was it yesterday?) that the cuts were postponed until June or July. 

there was a moritorium on post office closings and sorting plant closings until May 15th 2012. 

May is 6 months before the elections

I have a suspicion that either

1. Congress will finally free up the money they are holding hostage and put USPS back on firm finanical footing so they can say, reelect me, I saved the post office for you

or

2. they will convince the post office to do another moritorium until after the elections

Moritorium until May 15 - and we are still working on the plan to close the sorting plants -  just finializing the the list of those that will close on June 16 and those that will close on September 22 - those dates tie contractual excessing dates to help ease the closures and move the staff that we can.    I have a problem in that I have a very large sorting machine I need to relocate from South Florida to North Texas - 16 week project so maintenance needs to start Feb 25 - guess the mortiorium didn't say anything about cease the movement of equipment.

Brandy - heard a rumor on potential targeted  incentive for CSRS - 2 years or 1 year and 25K.  I'm FERS and need 1 more year before I am in the group to get any VERA offers.

1. Congress will finally free up the money they are holding hostage and put USPS back on firm finanical footing so they can say, reelect me, I saved the post office for you

If the election is what it takes for Congress to get their butt in gear, then so be it.  I really hope they do.  Frankly, it's a bit ridiculus.  I know at least there won't be any help from the California congressmen/women, since the whole lot of them are stupider than a donkey's behind. 

 I  my post office and don't want to see it go (no idea if it's on the list for cuts or not).  Thanks for the update!

My local processing center already closed, so they are closing some. Mine, Eatontown, NJ, was a really busy one too. Now our mail is being rerouted through trenton, which is about an hour away and it's taking forever. I can only imagine how much slower mail will get once they close a lot of them. :( 

On the postal side I work on the major mail processing plant closures - we are under moritorium not to do anything until May 15.  We consider this another Congress kicking the can down the road delay to hold off closures and maybe not provide any viable soultions to keep USPS viable.  Mail volume down 30% - any other business with this kind of loss needs to close locations and can't stay status quo without revenues to support - we have excess capacity and can consolidate (mail processing side of the organization).  This is a company that is actively tracking the date we will no longer be able to make payroll without significant changes.  But in the background we are still working on plant closure plans to be ready and have all the hundreds of action items addressed so we can quickly move to closure after May 15.  Slower delivery  - yes as the proposal is that overnight first class service is eliminated if you were realizing much overnight service any haven't already moved those communications to email, text, electronic payment options, go green without paper statements, etc.  It's a whirlwind of planning, and changes, and updates at this time.