[Malveaux:] Thousands of postal workers around the country are breathing a little sigh of relief today after the Senate passed a plan to save the U.S. Postal Service, as well as their jobs. The battle not yet over, however. Alison Kosik joins us from New York. Alison, my grandfather, he used to work for the post office. It's a good job. We know the House hasn't voted on this yet, but the Senate plan essentially is going to help people get back on their feet?
[Alison Kosik, Cnn Correspondent:] You're talking about the post office. And, yes, this bill, Suzanne, it will help the post office. But critics say the problem with this bill is that it just doesn't go far enough because what the bill winds up doing is making it hard for the USPS to make the cuts that it needs in the first place to save itself. So let me give you the big example here. The postal service says it wants to close almost 4,000 locations. And the Senate bill says, OK, go ahead and close them, but we're going to put restrictions on really whether or not you can close them. Meaning, the postal service first has to prove that these closures are justified with running through lots of studies and public comments. But the thing is, the postal service already looked at these closures. They've been looking at them since last year. They found out that these places are bringing in less than $50 a day. And Republican Congressman Darrell Issa said, you know what, if we keep studying this thing, it's going to mean more and more delays. It's going to cost millions of dollars more. All right, so also what this bill does, it caps executive pay. It authorizes worker buyouts. But it doesn't allow the post office to actually cut that Saturday service that we all rely on. It doesn't allow that cut in service for a few years, saying that really would only be a last resort. Suzanne.
[Malveaux:] Do we know, Alison, how much time the post office has before it just runs out of money?
[Kosik:] And that's a good question. But you look at what's going on here, it's already in such bad shape that it's borrowing money from the government. $12 billion so far. The Senate bill lets the postal service borrow even more money if it needs to. And, if you ask me, I think it needs to. You look at the USPS, it's literally bleeding money here. It's lost $5 billion just last year. It hasn't turned a profit in six years. And now the USPS is kind of caught between a rock and a hard place though. You know, give it some credit here. It needs to make cuts. But the problem with the way the USPS gets its approval approval process goes, they have to go through Congress first. So the USPS can't run itself like a business wood because it's tied up in all those all that politics. So you can't really see it just like a business, any old business, Suzanne.
[Malveaux:] And, Alison, I know a lot of people, they look forward to getting their mail on Saturday. Weekend is really important for a lot of folks. And they're going to be able to get their mail for at least, what, on the weekends, another couple years, right? That
[Kosik:] Right. Another couple of years. It shows you just how much we rely on our mail, getting it on Saturday, that the Senate bill did put a stipulation in that that is only a last resort, that the Saturday service would go away.
[Malveaux:] All right. Alison Kosik, thanks. Appreciate it.
[Kosik:] Sure.
[Malveaux:] Baby boomers turn to machines to keep them fit. That is pilates machines. You're going to hear one woman's story of how this exercise kept her medical bills down.