"It wasn't somebody in engineering who thought of Netflix," he said. "It was somebody that thought they could take a DVD and put it in the mail. Amazon.com wasn't a thought of someone in the Postal Service."

The next day, Potter and his team touted new ads for Wal-Mart's mail-order pharmacy that feature the Postal Service. Disney will air ads soon for the new "Toy Story 3" movie that incorporate the Postal Service. And Hallmark plans to sell greeting cards that include envelopes with prepaid postage. All are deals designed to boost business and remind Americans that the Postal Service still matters.

'Very tough year'

Potter knows he's asking Congress to tackle "a very difficult issue in a very tough year," and he conceded that lawmakers will probably adopt small changes over time instead of the massive overhaul he wants all at once.

Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) said Congress needs to give Potter flexibility. In the Post poll in March, 71 percent of Americans said they support cutting Saturday deliveries. Carper mentioned those numbers during a recent Senate Democratic Caucus luncheon. "I think that some just need to be better informed," he said.

But others are unconvinced.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) worries that Potter hasn't done enough.

"It seems that every three years the Postal Service comes to us asking for financial relief in return for future profitability. We seem to give the relief and don't seem to get the profitability," she said.

Potter expects that unions will make concessions during negotiations this year, but William Burrus, president of the American Postal Workers Union, warned otherwise.

"I'm not going to make any concessions," Burrus said. "He's trying to deny services to the American public through the service reductions. All of this is designed to accelerate significant savings and become a delivery arm of major mailers."

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Another skeptic is the Postal Regulatory Commission's chairman, Ruth Y. Goldway. Her panel doesn't plan to issue its nonbinding opinion until at least October, complicating Potter's preferred timeline. Goldway is not shy about voicing her fears that Potter is chipping away at the Postal Service's unique place in American society.

"His plan to move post offices into Wal-Mart is not my idea of an adequate replacement," she said. "He hasn't put a penny into modernizing, renovating or creating new and attractive post offices."

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