Wait a minute, Mr. Postman

As business skyrockets for Amazon and other online shipping and delivery services during the pandemic, it’s tempting to ask whether it’s time to pull the plug on the U.S. Postal Service, with its every-door every-day delivery schedule, its bricksand-mortar neighborhood service centers, its unwieldy pension burden and the enmity of President Donald Trump and much of the GOP establishment.

Trump’s dislike of the Postal Service is so intense that he reportedly threatened to veto the recent $2-trillion economic relief package if it included any postal bailout. Private airlines and other giant corporations, yes; the national lifeline that reaches virtually every American in good times and bad, no way.

Yes, the agency is premodern — in a good way. When the electricity goes out, the cell tower is down or the Internet isn’t working (all of which could easily happen during a natural disaster or enemy attack), the Postal Service and its employees are the nation’s vital link, as befits a publicly held resource.

The agency plays an essential role in urban and suburban areas, where postal workers are the ones who bring many of those Amazon packages to the front door. And in rural and hard-to-reach areas, postal workers are the only ones who provide regular delivery service because there’s not enough money in it for private courier businesses.

In the short term, Congress should do exactly what should be done for the nation’s most essential services in times of emergency. It should properly fund the Postal Service to keep it serving us in normal times and to keep it ready for times like now.