Even though some have expressed hope for postal reform legislation during the lame-duck session that will take place before the new Congress starts in January, we continue to believe that it is highly unlikely. Senator Carper’s office expresses optimism and a burning need for legislation, and a group of business mailers who have teamed with postal unions has been promoting its alternative package. Nevertheless, both efforts seem like extreme long shots as Congress faces much more urgent priorities, and the imminent crisis that seemed to have consumed the Postal Service has receded.
As the USPS prepares to release its fiscal year 2014 financial results on November 14, an article this week expressed wonderment at how the media have continued the crisis narrative and virtually ignored the positive improvements surrounding our postal system this year. Kent Smith, a commentator for PostalVision 2020, titled his article “Is This Not News?” and cited 8 recent facts about the USPS that qualify as good news:
We agree with Mr. Smith that things are much better and also with his assertion that the Postal Service is not out of the woods yet. Here is his article.
Clearly, there remain substantial costs within the postal system that can be reduced without negatively affecting the services rendered to the paying customers. And postal management very much has tried, sometimes very successfully, to take many of these unnecessary costs out. To the extent that management cannot reduce certain costs, the reason has been to support public policy objectives by, for example, keeping more rural post offices than a business could justify, retaining excess processing capacity, and continuing Saturday mail delivery.
The major two-part public policy issue to be grappled with about the future of our nation’s postal system will be how many of these services that are not demanded by the customers who pay the freight should be continued, and how to pay for them. Prior to postal reorganization in 1970, a public service subsidy from taxpayers made up the difference; now that is not likely to happen. For about three decades after 1970, very high growth in mailing by businesses and organizations was enough to pay for the public services of the USPS. While mail volumes and revenues have stabilized and package delivery related to e-commerce is booming, it remains to be seen how much of that gap will be made up by paying customers who do not demand the excesses.