Postal legislation did not move to the floor of either the House or the Senate before they adjourned for election campaigning. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring of the House Oversight bill passed on July 12 has not been released.

The CBO score of the federal budget impact of the bill in the next ten years is critical. That is because the most important element of the bill is elimination of the unfunded $50 billion estimated cost of postal retiree health benefits. Moving more postal retirees to Medicare will result in an increase in cost to the federal government that would need to be offset by savings.

The public policy case for the bill was not helped by an analysis by a leading expert on federal health care plans, Walton Francis.  He concluded: “Congress needs to consider a wider and more sensible range of options to deal with the underlying problems. These options would solve postal financial problems while reducing, rather than increasing, costs.”

The odds are long against both houses of Congress passing a new postal law after they return on November 14, but stranger things have happened.