This editorial was published in the Yakima Herald-Republic on Aug. 14, 2009.

Politicians often will make a solemn pledge while campaigning that if elected they will run government as they would a business.

Somehow that pledge of treating public agencies with an eye toward productivity and a robust bottom line gets sidetracked after they take office.

Right now the U.S. Postal Service demands that kind of business acumen from lawmakers in Congress.

If any government department cried out for better business practices, the Postal Service is it. Facing a record $7 billion deficit in 2009, the service is desperately seeking ways to cut services, slash personnel and close or consolidate some of its 3,200 postal stations and branches.

Yakima County was one of six areas in the state, including Spokane and Seattle, where postal stations were being considered for closure. Last week, Postal Service officials arrived in Union Gap to ask residents what they thought about possible plans to shut down the city's post office at 3514 Main St.

The answer was a resounding no. More than 100 people attended that meeting and spoke with a singular voice.

Few at the meeting had anything good to say about their neighbors to the north. Several complained that the postal workers in Yakima were rude and that they would sometimes have to wait in line for as long as 30 minutes.

Not so in Union Gap, they argued. "This is a wonderful post office," summed up one loyal customer.

In the case of Union Gap, it may be the city's lone post office, but it's not as if there aren't others in close proximity. Within a radius of less than five miles from the Union Gap station -- 4.4 miles to be precise -- there are four other post offices. Yakima's main station at 205 W. Washington Ave. is two miles away.

Several days after the Union Gap meeting, the Postal Service decided against closing the city's post office and backed away from shuttering others across the state. The reason? Officials said the post offices were too important for their communities.

If closing post offices are not an option, what is? Something has to give.

Postmaster General John E. Potter says his department has to do something to staunch the hemorrhaging. The current trend lines are not favoring the Postal Service. Fewer people are affixing stamps to envelopes these days. The Postal Service is expected to handle at least 27 billion fewer pieces of mail this year than in 2008. With more Americans using e-mail and making payments online, it's only going to get worse.

That's why the Postal Service is seeking approval by Congress to pay health benefits from a retirement fund. That would save $2 billion a year from its operating budget.

In the last decade alone, the Postal Service -- this nation's second largest employer -- has shed more than 160,000 jobs through attrition, and offered this spring early retirement for 150,000 more workers.

Even more drastic is a proposal to cut Saturday postal service and go to five-day-a-week delivery. That would save as much as $3 billion a year.

Now you would think this effort to slash expenses by ending delivery on Saturdays would be greeted with approval by those politicians in Congress who have loudly advocated a desire to run government as a business.

Not a chance. Strong opposition greeted the proposal early in the year. Some termed the response from lawmakers as a "chilly reception."

But $7 billion in the hole is no way to run an independent agency of the federal government. Do you think its competitors in the private sector, Federal Express or United Parcel Service, could carry that enormous debt on their balance sheets for long?

As we have seen, running deficits -- even if they total in the billions -- has become business as usual for Congress. That has to change, and for the Postal Service it has to happen soon.

* Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Michael Shepard, Bob Crider, Spencer Hatton and Karen Troianello.