With all the layoffs in the media business, it might have slipped the notice of many, but it's still news, and of no minor consequence for all media. The U.S. Postal Service is contemplating trimming roughly 40,000 employees, or 6 percent of its workforce, in the first layoffs in its 233 years.

It's just one of the options the USPS is considering in the face of a projected budget deficit of $2 billion this year.

The Post Office needs to do something.

It was mandated to be run as a business back in 1971 while carrying out its original charter: "The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities."

Today there are approximately 27,000 post offices across the country, down from 77,000 in 1900. Closing more branches is not an option.

Rather the postal service needs to rein in the cost of delivering the mail. That process has become that much more expensive as the marketplace has become more competitive, and the costs for not doing so have become steeper, as we see with the decision by DHL to close its U.S. operations at a cost of nearly 10,000 jobs.

Trimming the postal workforce to the quick during this economic downturn is also not a viable option. That would only add to nation's economic woes, and it would not relieve the problems the postal service faces.

How will the USPS survive? What are the solutions?

Here are several options that should be considered.

* Eliminate Saturday delivery. That would certainly be a big concern for both bulk mailers and the postal workers union, but it's a very workable option, and a smart one. In 1950 residential deliveries were reduced to one each day from two with no negative impact. Cutting back to a five-day delivery cycle would have about the same impact.

* Do more to automate services, much in the way banking has been automated, with ATMs now at every street corner.

* Raise postal rates. The cost of mailing a first-class letter is a bargain for consumers and a money-loser for the Post Office.

Hiking the cost from the current 42 cents to 75 cents for all but senior citizens would more than cover the postal service's deficit, and mailing a first-class letter would still be a bargain.

Rates also ought to be raised for the bulk mail that clutters our mailboxes. The rates now are so low as to encourage waste. The cost for basic delivery of 150 bar-coded pieces of mail to a single five-digit area is as low as 22.5 cents (12.7 cents for a non-profit). You read that right: 150 pieces. That absurdly low pricing structure feeds USPS losses while polluting our environment with tangible spam.

* Have the USPS launch an email service for both business and residential customers, supported in part by advertising sponsors. If Google, Yahoo, MSN and scores of other internet services can do it, why not the U.S. Postal Service?

* Negotiate with the postal workers union to revamp retirement benefits for new hires. USPS employees now enjoy retirement benefits similar to those of the military, among the sweetest around.

The last option is for Postal officials to ask the federal government for a bailout. But that would mean waiting in line behind AIG, countless banks and the Big Three auto makers, and that could be a long wait indeed.

And whatever one might think of AIG, the banks and the Big Three, we actually do need a working mail service. We--and it-- should not have to wait in line.