The United States Postal Service and its customers have labored for years under the fiction that the government service authorized in the Constitution is an ordinary for-profit (or at least break-even) business. Congress had forced USPS to pre-fund decades of retirement benefits ahead of time. For once, Congress has acted in bipartisan fashion to fix what it broke.
USA Today explains what is in the USPS reform bill President Biden signed on Wednesday:
Under the law, the mandate that required the Postal Service to pay into future retiree health benefits will be dropped. Instead, retired postal employees will be required to enroll in Medicare.
In addition, the USPS must maintain a public dashboard tracking service performance and will report regularly on its “operations and financial condition,” according to a summary of the bill. It will also be able to create “non-postal services” in partnership with state and local government, like fishing licenses and subway passes, McConnell said.
The bill will save the Postal Service almost $50 billion over the next decade, according to Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Porter McConnell, co-founder of the Save the Post Office Coalition, commented on what happens next:
“The vast majority of the budget shortfall at USPS can be attributed to the pre-funding mandate that the bill eliminates,” McConnell said. “Eliminating it removes the biggest excuse for the service cuts and price hikes that postal customers have experienced since Louis DeJoy became Postmaster General. We have seen that austerity logic leads to short-sighted decision-making, and that leads to slower, more expensive mail for all of us.”
Regarding mail-in votes for future elections, O’Rourke said that, given no real evidence of widespread voter fraud via mail, voting by mail is more of a state legislative issue than a Postal Service one.
“I have full confidence the Postal Service can handle an election, could handle three or 4 million ballots,” O’Rourke said. “They proved they could do it the last time around.
“They deliver between 10 and 12 billion pieces (of mail) at Christmas,” he added. “Election is a day at the beach for those guys.”
Conservatives have sought to eliminate or privatize USPS for years. The service’s 600,000-plus employees (and their union) stand between privatizers and their profits.
Now to get rid of DeJoy.
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