Nobody is surprised the U.S. Postal Service is still hemorrhaging money, but we’re glad to see Postmaster General John Potter at least offer significant systemic changes beyond just hiking the price of postage stamps. His chief suggestion of cutting mail delivery on Saturday is a good start — if only a start.

Yes, let us now hear long, sad tales of eager children waiting longingly for birthday checks in the mail from adoring grandparents and old-timers not tapped into e-mail and dependent on delivery of the mail six days a week. Well, we, too, would miss delivery of the mail on Saturday.

But is this not something that Americans, when pressed, could afford to do without, especially considering that the U.S. Postal Service is projected to lose $238 billion over the next decade? We think so — and it could well prepare us for even greater, more painful cuts in services currently provided by our state and federal governments, assuming our leaders ever gain the political courage to make the big cuts.

Some in Congress are already squawking about the very notion of cutting Saturday postal delivery, even though many post offices would remain open and mail would continue to be delivered to post office boxes on Saturday. Critics are likely in the same camp (Republicans and Democrats alike) that vilified U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning this week when he had the audacity to hold up a bill providing $10 billion in jobless benefits by demanding to know first how the government was going to pay for it. No one wanted to think too hard about that.

Americans talk big about cutting runaway spending. But if we can’t even agree on the need to cut Saturday mail delivery — which, by the way, won’t begin to ensure solvency for the U.S. Postal Service — how is this nation ever to manage more serious cuts?

The U.S. Postal Service saw a 13 percent drop in volume last year, double the number of any previous year, and it posted a loss last year of nearly $4 billion. Which raises the question: Should the post office cut delivery even further — say, down to three days a week? It’s a thought.

Retailers understandably don’t like the sound of any of this, especially those relying on mass mailings of ad supplements targeted for weekend delivery. They may simply have to do better planning in marketing campaigns and the production of mailers. (Another source of delivery on Saturdays, we might note, is the daily newspaper.)

Potter proposes other cuts, including restructuring health benefits for retirees and current postal employees. That won’t go down easily with the postal union and Congress, but if Potter has success, it may bode well for sacrifices to be made in programs as big and nearly bankrupt as Medicare.