February 11, 2021

Important Postal Policy Questions

All that is going on with our postal system leads us to pose important policy questions:

• Under its current structure and mandates, can the USPS ever reach the point of operating efficiently and effectively as a private business would? The record seems to indicate that it cannot. Numerous analyses by the Government Accountability Office, USPS Inspector General, and expert witnesses in regulatory and court proceedings lead us to the conclusion that the agency lacks the incentives and abilities to operate as a successful business enterprise.

• Does the PRC regulate the cost efficiency of USPS? The record indicates that in the 14 years since the Postal Rate Commission was renamed as a regulator, the agency has only been able to regulate rates. The PRC has ordered numerous reports on costs and service, but transparency is not enough to incentivize action by the USPS.

• Can postal management issue new orders and plans from headquarters that will lead to businesslike efficiency and effectiveness? As an agency whose costs are 70 percent labor, the USPS depends largely on the discretionary effort of about half a million employees spread throughout every community of the United States and its territories. If management can get the buy-in of postal employees and their powerful unions, perhaps progress toward efficiency could be made.

• Whose blueprint will lead the USPS into its future? Will it be the new strategic plan of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, or the members of Congress who seem to want DeJoy to leave and are preparing their own plans, or perhaps the Biden Administration?

• Can the postal agency successfully continue to migrate from primarily mail delivery to heavily packages? Can USPS compete for packages without a robust mail delivery network, every day to every address? Do we need a government agency whose primary purpose would be to deliver packages?

• Why are we denying our postal agency the public funding that it received for 200 years prior to 1980, even as the cost of Congressional mandates continues to grow? Why is a “self-funding” agency considering a sacred cow? How can USPS compete with the private sector if it piles public sector costs onto what it charges its customers?