The U. S. Postal Service doesn’t seem to be doing itself any favors by arguing that making service worse is the key to staying solvent.

The Postal Service arrived at its current juncture of near-bankruptcy because of the decline in use of the mail system in the age of the Internet and instant communication. So its answer is to make “snail mail” even slower?

As a business plan, it will surely drive more customers away and further undermine the viability of the mail operation.

“It’s almost laughable, if it wasn’t so serious,” said Robert J. McLennan, president of the Buffalo and Western New York Division of the National Association of Letter Carriers.

The Postal Service must reconsider and come up with a better answer.

In Western New York, the current proposal would be particularly destructive. The Postal Service has asked the Postal Regulatory Commission to relax delivery standards for first-class mail so it can pursue its goal of closing 252 mail processing facilities, including the one on William Street in Buffalo. Not only would 700 local jobs be lost, the closure of the William Street facility could erode the region’s economy in other ways.

The area’s financial services industry, for example, depends on immediate mail to keep transactions flowing. Even a day’s delay would create havoc.

Time-sensitive publications could be made obsolete by an extra day or two in the delivery.

And Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, pointed out that area veterans and senior citizens rely on next-day or second-day mail for critical needs such as Social Security checks and mail-order prescription drugs.

The Postal Service wants to close the William Street facility and shift the work to Rochester, in part because Rochester is more centrally located in the western district of the state.

Still, Buffalo is the state’s second-largest city and sits on an international border, within a day’s drive of 40 percent of the U. S. population and 60 percent of the Canadian population. That kind of geographic positioning has to mean some-thing to the Postal Service’s customers.

In the short term, President Obama and Congress need to become more involved in helping the Postal Service develop rational solutions to its financial problems. In 2006, Congress began requiring the Postal Service to pay $5.5 billion a year into a fund covering workers’ health benefits for the next 75 years, a requirement that applies to no other federal entity. Relief from that burden would go a long way toward maintaining the Postal Service as the nation’s most efficient and cost-effective vehicle for quickly delivering parcels, magazines, prescription drugs and business mail.

Ultimately, though, the Postal Service needs to be freed from the congressional oversight that now bogs down decision-making. More freedom should lead to more creativity, better business practices and new, profitable services.

Sometimes adding services—instead of always looking to subtract them—is the best way out of the spiral of continuing financial losses.