February 3, 2016

A January 21 hearing held by the Senate oversight committee left the impression that there is consensus support among customers of the Postal Service in favor of the iPost postal reform bill introduced by Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) on September 17, 2015.

Indeed, Postmaster General Megan Brennan emphasized consensus in her testimony: “[W]e have been working over the last year with key stakeholders, including our labor unions and a cross-section of the mailing industry, to discuss the business model issues that confront us, and to identify potential key reforms about which there is broad consensus that would make the Postal Service sustainable.”

Some media took away the message from the hearing that the “mailing industry” supports Ranking Member Carper’s postal reform bill called “iPost.” In fact, a major portion of the mailing industry, primarily those who pay “market-dominant” postage on mail, do not support the bill.

The Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, many of its members, and a broad coalition of mailers and mail service providers sent letters to committee Chairman, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) to go on record as not supporting iPost. The two main elements of the bill that mailers oppose are: (1) making the temporary exigent rate surcharge, scheduled to end in April, become permanent, and (2) severely limiting the USPS ability to continue to right-size its operations to better fit 150 billion annual pieces of mail.

Below we share letters from the Alliance and a coalition. Many members of the Alliance also sent in their own letters, and many signed on individually to a letter prepared by a large coalition of mailers, along with the Alliance. In fact, the hearing record remains open through Friday, February 5, and nonprofits, along with their business partners, are encouraged to send a letter for the record to: Laura Kilbride (Laura_Kilbride@hsgac.senate.gov) who is a staff member with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.