By The Hill
•I read with interest the article entitled “Fiscal Conservatives Should Support Postal Reform” (published on Jan. 25, 2022) and written by Thomas A. Schatz.
I think 9 out of 10 times, I agree with Schatz. And I certainly agree with the headline that postal reform is needed and that conservatives should play an active role in helping to shape that reform. But the devil is in the details. Calling it reform doesn’t necessarily mean it will make things better or improve the situation.
Schatz’s article correctly points out that the United States Postal Service (USPS) has had 15 consecutive years of net losses which dates back to when George W. Bush was president. Those losses total over $91 billion.
The problem is that the USPS has a variety of products that can be broken down into two broad categories. One category are non-competitive monopolist products like First Class mail. The law gives the USPS monopoly powers on First Class mail. Not surprisingly, the USPS is highly profitable on this category of products. It’s really hard to not make a profit when all competition has been outlawed.
But the other category of products are ones where the USPS has competitors — delivering packages for example. This is where they are losing the vast majority of the billions that they’ve been bleeding for a long time. But because the USPS accounting system is substandard, they cannot tell you precisely how much each category of package shipping is losing. And to make matters worse, they use the profits from First Class mail to subsidize their losses elsewhere. This makes it hard for the USPS to invest and upgrade its First Class equipment and processes. So year after year, the USPS is mismanaged and the taxpayer is asked periodically to bail them out.
The USPS was granted a monopoly on First Class from its beginning. But it focused on First Class mail so the problem was limited. But as the USPS has decided to expand its operations and compete with other businesses in the delivery of packages, the problems have begun to compound. And the losses have begun to mount. And as First Class profits were siphoned off to fund other priories, quality of service problems began to surface.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to approve of a government granted monopoly using those monopoly profits to expand their business and compete with private competitive businesses that don’t have access to monopoly profits to aid their business.
Years ago, I think Schatz had it right when he said, “The Postal Service’s substandard accounting, billion-dollar losses, and declining service quality highlights the need for the agency to focus solely on its letter mail products. Straying from its original mission will only compound the USPS’s problems and bring us even closer to the possibility of a taxpayer bailout.” (From a CAGW press release dated May 8, 2015)
The issue isn’t necessarily about forcing the USPS to have two sets of trucks and two sets of carriers — one for first class mail and one for their growing package business. The truth is making sure that the USPS is charging prices for its package shipping business that support its full costs is all that is needed. The USPS shouldn’t be allowed to divert monopoly profits from the USPS’s primary business first class mail. But this would require a modern accounting system and an honest and trustworthy division of the costs attributable to each line of business — something to date the USPS has been unwilling to do.
Would anyone want to compete with a business that had a government granted monopoly and was allowed to use those monopoly profits to compete with them and drive them out of the business? And that business model isn’t actually working for the USPS either. If it were, we wouldn’t be facing the perpetual losses and cries for help. So while I agree with Schatz’s call for needed reform, I do not understand how one can conclude that using monopoly profits to subsidize other business lines serves anyone’s interests except those who may have sweetheart deals to deliver their packages at well below market rates. That allows certain parties to divert monopoly profits to subsidize their shipping costs. That isn’t reform and it isn’t conservative.
Ten-year program crafted will allow Postal Service to remain a self-sustaining entity
•Controversial U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s initiatives to get the chronically mismanaged United States Postal Service back on sound financial footing are already bearing good fruit. His back-to-basics approach, which relies on strengthening core competencies and relying on increased efficiency, will likely keep U.S. taxpayers from having to spend billions to keep one of the world’s oldest postal systems in operation.
A Trump appointee, Mr. DeJoy drew the ire of progressives during the 2020 campaign when they accused him of making changes that would interfere with the ability of voters who could not get to the polls because of pandemic restrictions from voting by mail.
It would be a shame if partisan political concerns were allowed to derail his reform plans. The 10-year program Mr. DeJoy has pulled together will allow it to remain a self-sustaining entity funded by those who use the mail to send letters, catalogs, magazines, and packages for years going forward. The allegations against him have generally been disproven, at least as far as his leadership of the postal service is concerned. Some nonetheless would like to use them to block his initiatives from being enacted, even those Congress has endorsed in the bipartisan postal reform legislation currently under consideration.
The Postal Service Reform Act of 2021 (introduced in the U.S. Senate by Democrat Gary Peters of Michigan and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio) gives the Postal Service what it needs to eventually return to profitability.
Absent congressional approval for Mr. DeJoy’s plan, the USPS projects losses of more than $150 billion over the next 10 years. Mr. DeJoy and congressional postal leaders understand the problem — the decline in mail volume that’s taken place since the introduction of email and text messaging — and at least part of the solution, which lies in its e-tail driven package business.
It’s a strange turn of events. The last time Congress passed a piece of postal reform legislation, the primary concern was that the Postal Service might use earnings from its monopoly mail business to subsidize the cost of comprehensive package delivery — a globally competitive business.
Instead, the opposite occurred. Package deliveries are keeping the Postal Service afloat. Last year they generated a net $11 billion for the USPS over and above what it costs to deliver packages to every address in the continental United States six days a week.
By Newsmax
•Possible changes to the U.S. Postal Service are gaining significant momentum as Congress continues its legislative deliberations this summer. The proposal vehicle in question, known as the Postal Service Reform Act (PSRA), received positive reviews in the House of Representatives, and a Senate version was also recently released.
Despite accumulating 63 pages of legislative text, the bill emphasizes fiscal sleight of hand to achieve short-term stabilization, while leaving a massive amount of the Postal Service’s future in doubt.
The hallmark of the package is a $46 billion bailout of healthcare benefit provisions. These unfunded liabilities have added up since the USPS began defaulting on payments for retiree benefits in 2012.
The depths of such blanket debt forgiveness should be enough to make fiscal conservatives cringe at the sight of more government intervention — especially when the federal government is more rightly looking to support key U.S. industries, small businesses and job creators who were badly affected over the past year due to no fault of their own.
Another cringe-worthy issue with the proposal is a bizarre element that would further reduce the Postal Service’s monitoring of its own costs and revenue inflows. As the agency’s multi-billion-dollar losses persist year after year, it hardly makes sense to dial back transparency and leave accounting managers off the hook.
The provision in question involves a statute that calls for the Postal Service to ”maintain an integrated network for the delivery of market-dominant and competitive products.” To be sure, it is sensible that the Postal Service carries both letter mail and packages together for the sake of delivery efficiency from one address to the next. In this sense the USPS already has an ”integrated network.” However, as a government-chartered operation, the Postal Service must be compelled to fully articulate the financial differences between its essential public service, and its products that are subject to the risks of the competitive market.
With this glaring understanding, lawmakers should be outraged by this ”integrated network” item that blurs the lines of the Postal Service’s finances. The chaotic nature of USPS fiscal management truly demands that we don’t throw away essential precautions. Instead, more analytical tools must be used to reinforce transparency about the separate impacts of every service — mail, packages and everything else.
With the PSRA, the Postal Service would benefit from major fiscal flexibilities, while it would also enjoy diminished responsibilities when it comes to delivery performance goals. This prospect of even more delayed mail delivery, coupled with all the irresponsibility of reform should be especially concerning to key Senate leaders.
Policymakers including Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Mitt Romney R-Utah, must be especially concerned about the nature of deeply consequential bailouts and leaving millions of constituents who rely on the mail hanging out to dry.
Forcing American customers, especially those in harder to reach rural areas, to deal with more frequent mail slowdowns and higher stamps prices simply only adds insult to injury.
In parallel with the PSRA, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has proposed a 10-year business plan for the Postal Service, which assumes that Congress will agree to the $46 billion liability bailout in order to kick-start systemic changes that would rebalance costs and revenues. However, these important plans may never see the light of day. Democrat leaders in Congress have spent January, March, and June organizing campaigns to ensure that Postmaster General DeJoy is soon fired from his role.
Senate leaders must be wise to see how the grand Postal Service bargain is destined to burst at the seams and there is simply no reason to swallow this bitter legislative pill. The political ramifications of Postal Service reform demands all-inclusive measures, and it is entirely clear that the Postal Service Reform Act is incomplete and would be detrimental for Americans.
By Newsmax
•Possible changes to the U.S. Postal Service are gaining significant momentum as Congress continues its legislative deliberations this summer. The proposal vehicle in question, known as the Postal Service Reform Act (PSRA), received positive reviews in the House of Representatives, and a Senate version was also recently released.
Despite accumulating 63 pages of legislative text, the bill emphasizes fiscal sleight of hand to achieve short-term stabilization, while leaving a massive amount of the Postal Service’s future in doubt.
The hallmark of the package is a $46 billion bailout of healthcare benefit provisions. These unfunded liabilities have added up since the USPS began defaulting on payments for retiree benefits in 2012.
The depths of such blanket debt forgiveness should be enough to make fiscal conservatives cringe at the sight of more government intervention — especially when the federal government is more rightly looking to support key U.S. industries, small businesses and job creators who were badly affected over the past year due to no fault of their own.
Another cringe-worthy issue with the proposal is a bizarre element that would further reduce the Postal Service’s monitoring of its own costs and revenue inflows. As the agency’s multi-billion-dollar losses persist year after year, it hardly makes sense to dial back transparency and leave accounting managers off the hook.
The provision in question involves a statute that calls for the Postal Service to ”maintain an integrated network for the delivery of market-dominant and competitive products.” To be sure, it is sensible that the Postal Service carries both letter mail and packages together for the sake of delivery efficiency from one address to the next. In this sense the USPS already has an ”integrated network.” However, as a government-chartered operation, the Postal Service must be compelled to fully articulate the financial differences between its essential public service, and its products that are subject to the risks of the competitive market.
With this glaring understanding, lawmakers should be outraged by this ”integrated network” item that blurs the lines of the Postal Service’s finances. The chaotic nature of USPS fiscal management truly demands that we don’t throw away essential precautions. Instead, more analytical tools must be used to reinforce transparency about the separate impacts of every service — mail, packages and everything else.
With the PSRA, the Postal Service would benefit from major fiscal flexibilities, while it would also enjoy diminished responsibilities when it comes to delivery performance goals. This prospect of even more delayed mail delivery, coupled with all the irresponsibility of reform should be especially concerning to key Senate leaders.
Policymakers including Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Mitt Romney R-Utah, must be especially concerned about the nature of deeply consequential bailouts and leaving millions of constituents who rely on the mail hanging out to dry.
Forcing American customers, especially those in harder to reach rural areas, to deal with more frequent mail slowdowns and higher stamps prices simply only adds insult to injury.
In parallel with the PSRA, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has proposed a 10-year business plan for the Postal Service, which assumes that Congress will agree to the $46 billion liability bailout in order to kick-start systemic changes that would rebalance costs and revenues. However, these important plans may never see the light of day. Democrat leaders in Congress have spent January, March, and June organizing campaigns to ensure that Postmaster General DeJoy is soon fired from his role.
Senate leaders must be wise to see how the grand Postal Service bargain is destined to burst at the seams and there is simply no reason to swallow this bitter legislative pill. The political ramifications of Postal Service reform demands all-inclusive measures, and it is entirely clear that the Postal Service Reform Act is incomplete and would be detrimental for Americans.
By Newslooks
•Keep the STOP Act to halt the Opioid Epidemic
The Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention Act, more commonly known as the STOP Act is a bipartisan bill, that was signed into law in October 2018 in order to reduce the amount of illicit items traveling through the U.S. Postal Service in the United States. This law was specifically designed to help close an existing loophole that has allowed illicit drugs, which have contributed to the nation’s opioid crisis, to be transported into the United States via USPS.
Unfortunately, the forces in Washington, DC are considering measures that would effectively pause the progress in compliance, or adjust the compliance thresholds of this law, either of which would negatively affect the identification and prevention of the spread of illicit and illegal distributions.
The Postal Service Should Do What Other Shippers Do to Reduce Illegal Drug Shipments
The STOP Act requires the USPS to gather advance electronic data (AED) for inbound international packages. It requires foreign postal operators to include fields such as the item identifier, sender’s full name and address, recipient’s full name and address, stated content description, unit of measure and quantity, weight, declared value, and date of mailing. With the tightened security, it helps reduce the number of bad actors who use the USPS loophole to get drugs into the country. This reform was pushed for by both lawmakers and stakeholders for years. The STOP Act is a sensible, necessary, solution to deadly epidemic in the United.
The need for solutions like the STOP Act has been in the works since 2016 and regrettably the deadly opioid crisis has continue to spread and we still desperately need this precaution in 2021. Preliminary federal data found that 87,000 Americans died of drug overdoses over the 12-month period that ended in September. This marks the highest amount since the opioid epidemic began in the 1990s. The data shows that the coronavirus pandemic unquestionably exacerbated the trend as the largest increase in overdose deaths occurred in April and May of 2020.
It is disappointing that the Biden administration is passing up on an opportunity to keep Americans safe. While the USPS was able to increase the number of inbound international packages reporting AED to 67 percent in January of 2020, it failed to reach its goal of 100 percent of packages by the deadline imposed in the law, January 2021. Robert Cintron Vice President, Logistics United States Postal Service noted that the coronavirus pandemic impacted international mail shipments, affected their ability to do so, but as our country moves forward it is absolutely imperative that we refocus on this important issue.
The Biden Administration Should Keep America and Americans Safe by Enforcing and Upholding the Law
It is vital that we continue to advocate for these solutions as they have the potential to save lives across the country. Therefore, it is imperative for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to go back to the drawing board on its proposed rules for collection of advance electronic information for international mail shipments, and the frameworks for collaboration between the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). American citizens depend heavily on these critical safeguards for protecting our mail system. And it isn’t asking too much for the USPS to live up to similar standards of professionalism as other carriers who have been protecting parcels shipped into America for years. Moreover, the USPS shouldn’t allow itself to be used as a mule — shipping illegal and deadly drugs into America — because of its unwillingness to live up to industry standards that protect all Americans.
•
Thousands of ballots appear to have been lost in heavily Republican Butler County, PA., leaving officials confused and working with the U.S. Postal Service to retrieve them, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Friday.
“Over the last week and a half, the Bureau of Elections has received thousands of calls and emails from voters saying they did not receive their mail-in or absentee ballots,” a statement from the county said. “The postal service is maintaining daily contact with our Elections Bureau and is aware of the situation.”
Estimates on the number of missing ballots run into the tens of thousands. According to published reports, the county Elections Bureau mailed out nearly 40,000 with just about half returned as of Thursday.
A spokesperson for the postal service said in a statement to KDKA-TV, “Regarding mail sorting and delivery in Butler County, the Postal Service is unaware of any significant delays or issues and is in regular contact with the Board of Election as we work to locate and deliver ballots as they are presented to us.”
County officials said they would focus on the challenges of providing voters who may not have received mail-in ballots with other options to vote in the upcoming election rather than spend time on finding the ballots that have apparently gone missing. They also that all returned ballots would be recorded on the county web site within the next 48 hours so voters should be able to check if their mail-in ballots were received.
Neighboring Westmoreland County has had similar troubles with ballots this week, the paper said, but numbers are improving. County officials said Friday evening that 52,729 mail-in or absentee ballots have been returned out of the 75,642 that were sent to voters.
Tuesday was the last day for Pennsylvania voters to apply for an absentee or mail-in ballot. Nonetheless, the paper said, a steady stream of voters visited the Butler County Courthouse Friday afternoon to drop their completed mail-in ballots off in person.
“My wife and I decided to drop them off today because we don’t think it would get in on time if we had mailed them,” Anthony Grossi, of Butler, told the paper.
Anyone whose ballot is missing may, the county suggested, go to the Bureau of Elections and vote in person. The office will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday and 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday. Or they may vote on Tuesday at their local polling place.
By Daily Caller
•With tax reform now in the rear view mirror on President Donald Trump’s list of priorities, it is clear now that he has another mishandled federal issue in his sights – the U.S. Postal Service. In a tweet posted just before the New Year, the President asks why the USPS is, “charging Amazon and others so little to deliver packages, making Amazon richer and Post Office dumber and poorer?”
This consternation refers to an analysis conducted by CitiGroup, which found that Amazon deliveries received an astounding average subsidy of $1.46 per package. Multiply this giveaway by hundreds of millions of packages that are captured by the secretive deal (known as a Negotiated Service Agreement) and it appears that USPS’ package losses surely are tremendous.
Even worse, Amazon may also be causing the integrity of USPS to deteriorate. In fact, reports from California, Utah and Georgia indicate that the Postal Service has been falsifying Amazon package deliveries. Continue reading
•
On February 2, 2017, Frontiers of Freedom President, George Landrith made the following statement on Postal Reform:
“With a nationwide decline in the service performance standards of the U.S. Postal service, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have introduced a bill that is ill-equipped to handle the real problem at hand. For two consecutive years USPS has failed to meet delivery goals for nearly every First-Class mail product and yet the bill fails to properly establish greatly needed mail performance requirements. This bill also ignores the rate-setting process with its regulator by calling for a price increase that further jeopardizes the Postal Service’s fundamental charge to provide quality service at reasonable cost. Instead of pulling the Postal Service out of the gutter where it currently lies, this bill regrettably keeps the structural problems that plague the federal agency and limits their ability to put customers first.”
by Peter Roff • Independent Journal Opinion
Throughout his career, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders has championed postal reform. He wants to save the United States Postal Service and its hundreds of thousands of public employee union jobs, by broadening the scope of its activities.
It’s an interesting idea, which is probably why the American Postal Workers Union was an early presidential endorser, and a bad one. Allowing the USPS to transact non-bank financial services opens the door to competition in areas private business has shown it can handle quite competently, thank you very much.
It’s inevitable a full range of banking services would eventually follow, free of the encumbrance of the onerous Dodd-Frank requirements and the overly invasive Consumer Financial Protection Board the massive new banking law spawned. The idea is already out there. More than one policy wonk has hit on it as to provide services to what folks have taken to calling the under-banked. Continue reading