May 12, 2021

For years, USPS has appended this statement to its press releases: “The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.”  A recent example: “These ARE the Droid Stamps You’re Looking For: Star Wars-Inspired Stamps Are Here to Help Promote STEM Education.”

The USPS statement is no longer true.  The agency is now very much in the thick of federal funding:

✅Received $10 billion for pandemic-related costs.

✅Requested $330 million in appropriations for FY22.

✅Requested $8 billion for electric vehicles.

✅Requested Medicare integration to shift the cost of retiree health benefits, saving $58 billion over ten years.

The Alliance supports federal funding of the costs that USPS incurs as an essential public service, performing critical tasks that no business would.  The clear definition of the annual cost of the USPS universal service obligations, its non-businesslike requirements, would be the place to start an ongoing systematic solution to this problem.  Once defined, the public, non-business obligations should be funded by the government, not by mailers who have no alternative service providers for hard-copy delivery to America’s mailboxes.

If the businesslike side of USPS is forced to pass on its public obligation costs to paying customers, it will be on the road to ruin.  None of the private sector businesses USPS competes with bear such a burden.

In providing the funding Congress already has and is working on, it is reflecting reality.  A federal agency cannot operate like a private business as long as it is required to perform unfunded expensive public service obligations.