Tired of waiting for Congress to act, the U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday it plans to end most Saturday mail delivery beginning in August.

The financial crisis facing the agency has been known for several years as e-mail and Internet-based bill-paying become common. The Postal Service, while mandated to be financially self-sustaining, remains under the control of Congress.

That government control of the agency should be lifted.

Despite the announcement to end Saturday delivery, a move expected to save about $2 billion a year, it’s unclear how Congress will react to the announcement. The Postal Service said it will continue to deliver packages on Saturday, which allows it to claim it is not truly ending mandated six-day-a-week delivery.

The Postal Service deserves credit for stepping up and pressing to make changes. The agency’s current operation accumulates losses of about $36 million a day and is expected to record a $21 billion annual loss by 2016.

Since 2006, the agency has cut its annual operating costs by $15 billion, including the trimming of its workforce by 193,000 people, or 28 percent. But those changes are not enough.

Last year, the agency lost $15.6 billion. The mandatory prepayment of future retirees’ health care benefits, forced on the agency by Congress in 2006, accounts for about a third of those losses.

While Congress dithers over politics, fiscal cliffs and budget issues, the Postal Service is taking action to help it survive in a rapidly changing world.

Reducing delivery to five-days-a-week is only the first of several changes needed. Previous plans to close thousands of small post office facilities in mostly rural communities across America has been met with congressional resistance. But it’s clear that keeping those small post offices open does not make sense if there is another branch located a few miles away.

There also should be debate over the long-standing principle of universal service, delivering to every address in the U.S. for the same price.

It might be time to end the post office’s monopoly and let it fully compete. In Europe, many postal service operations have been privatized. When forced to compete with private delivery companies, the postal agencies have become more efficient. In Germany, the postal service was privatized in 2005 and through modernization it has become a major player in global delivery.

For too long, Congress has prevented the Postal Service from making logical cost-cutting moves that would have been automatic in a private business.

The prepayment of health care costs for future retirees places an additional and unnecessary burden on the Postal Service. Congress should lift that requirement or modify it.

Pulling back to five-day delivery and closing many small, rural post offices is just the start. There should be an open debate over the continued subsidization of junk mail by the Postal Serv-ice. Junk mail represents about 48 percent of the agency’s total mail volume, and it has contracts with big companies allowing for pricing set too low to cover delivery costs.

For years, first-class mail rates were increased while rates for junk mail were kept low, or even reduced, to increase volume.

Congress should let the Postal Service do whatever it needs to do to survive and compete. Too much meddling by Congress, including possible interference by lobbying interests of FedEx and UPS, has kept the Postal Service from making changes that have been obvious for years. The U.S. Postal Service should follow the lead of postal systems in Europe — it should be spun off, privatized and pressed to compete.