McCaskill pushes to keep rural Missouri post offices open

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - While closing more than three thousand rural post offices may cut costs for the United States Postal Service, Sen. Claire McCaskill says the closings would do far more harm than good.

"Those closings, especially in Missouri, only make up one percent of their budget," said McCaskill. "We may need to change hours of operation, we may need to change locations and put postal service windows in other businesses, but I think it is imperative that we hold on to these post offices for the small communities around our state."

167 rural post offices are on the list of possible closings or consolidations in Missouri.

United States Postal officials want to close the post offices after the 2011 fiscal year ended with a more than $5 billion deficit and have a more than $5 billion hole in their pension fund.

McCaskill is joining a group of senators from across the country who want to protect those post offices from closing for at least four years, hoping other cost-saving measures from the post office will start to work. McCaskill says the USPS should no longer have to fund their pension fund with future funds. She adds closing urban post offices would be a far better solution to closing rural post offices.

Beth Wheeler says her town of Jameson, Missouri would lose much more than just easier mail service if her post office were to close. "It is really a community. It brings a lot of individuals and views together which there would be no other place, no other single place in that community if the post office, the bricks and mortar were not there."