EDITORIAL: Save USPS from travesties
Mar. 4—One of the reasons that Congress should stabilize the U.S. Postal Service is the agency's historical and ongoing role as a unifying national institution.
Just about everyone still uses USPS services almost every day, and the public reaction to recent declines in service demonstrates that Americans want that role not only to continue, but improve.
That is part of the reason that there is a strong bipartisan support in both houses of Congress for a major reform bill that would be the first step to broader restoration of the service.
Part of the USPS' problem is in the marketplace. Due largely to the transfer of personal communication and commerce from the post office to the internet, postal business vastly has declined.
The USPS delivered 103.6 billion piece of first-class mail in 2001 but only 52.6 billion pieces in 2021.
Over the same period, its number of employees declined from nearly 800,000 to fewer than 500,000.
But part of the problem was created by Congress in 2006 — a unique requirement that it pre-fund retiree health benefits up to 75 years in advance.
No government agency or private business could meet such a standard, and no others are required to do so. Along with pension payments, the health care requirement is responsible for 83% of USPS losses since 2006.
In 2020, in a broadly bipartisan 309-106 vote, the House passed the USPS Fairness Act, which would repeal the unsustainable 2006 requirement and put the agency on a pay-as-it-goes basis. The Senate did not act on the bill.
Now the bill has been reintroduced with similar bipartisan support. Congress should pass it as the first step to overall postal service reform.
