Plans to effectively kill off the postal service are bipartisan, as a new bill from Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn and Delaware Democratic Sen. Tom "will somebody primary this guy already" Carper demonstrates. While the bill has some good pieces, like allowing the postal service to actually compete with its private sector competitors by shipping alcohol, and removing a pre-funding requirement for retiree health care that no other company or government agency faces,
other aspects of the bill would be disastrous:
The Senate measure also opens the door to ending full Saturday delivery in a year and would try to move the USPS away from door-to-door delivery in many cases. New businesses and homes would be forced into curbside or cluster box delivery, while existing addresses could shift upon request.
If that doesn't sound so awful at first blush, National Association of Letter Carriers member Bill Brickley explains
some of the problems. Cutting Saturday service, for instance:
Cutting 16% of the USPS services to save at most 3% of the budget doesn’t seem to be a rational strategy. Saving any money itself is in question as studies have shown that losing Saturday delivery would reduce mail volume by 7.7% that itself would result in a revenue loss of $5.3 Billion far exceeding the money projected to be saved by cutting a day of delivery.
Other aspects of this bill that would harm the American public is that this bill requires the Postal Service to change your mode of delivery to the deivery mode “that is most cost – effective and in the best long-term interest of the Postal Service” This may save the Postal Service some delivery time but to force elderly people into a situation where it will be difficult for them to retrieve their mail in the harsh winter or sweltering summer is not a matter that a civilized society should put a price on.
This Senate bill also removes safeguards for rural customers that have been in place to guarantee them reasonable access to a post office. There will be no limit on how far you must travel to get to your “local” post office.
If Congress continues to restrict the postal service from fully competing with UPS and FedEx (that it's banned from shipping alcohol is just one of the ways the post office is at a disadvantage in its fight for survival) while cutting ways that it outdoes the competition, like its unparalleled reach, of course the postal service will struggle. But that's why Congress created this crisis to begin with, so that it could propose a series of answers involving pain for workers and consumers.
