The Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service (C21) – an organization of public and private companies, trade associations and other industry groups which rely on the U.S. Postal Service to do business – today called on the Trump administration to support the enactment of legislation reforming the USPS’ financial obligations and to avoid wholesale privatization and pricing measures as the President’s Task Force on the Postal System’s continues to work on its report, allegedly delayed until after the midterm elections.
“As the Task Force continues its work, the postal financial condition continues to deteriorate, putting millions of jobs throughout the country at risk,” wrote C21 Manager Art Sackler in a letter sent today to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, whose department is overseeing the Task Force report. “The situation is so precarious that a shorter-term solution has become imperative. Enactment of bipartisan postal reform legislation currently pending in the Senate (S. 2629), as well as in the House (H.R. 6076), would provide effective relief for USPS, and those millions of jobs that depend upon it, for several years at no cost to taxpayers. Importantly, it would also provide the breathing room for Congress to consider fully and choose, in an informed and deliberate way, to enact or not some or all of the Task Force’s recommendations. We urge the Administration to support the foregoing bills and work toward their enactment before this Congress ends.”
The letter also cautioned against wholesale privatization and rate increases that would drive away mailers and shippers, which generate more than 90 percent of revenues for the USPS: “Privatization would be a major challenge to universal service, undermining equal mail and shipping treatment of all Americans, with a particularly ominous threat to rural service,” continued Sackler in the letter. “Increasing postal rates would be folly in an environment in which there are cheaper and reliable alternatives … Packages have been almost the lone bright spot for the Postal Service, earning much-needed new revenues for the system. Raising rates for them may halt or even reverse this beneficial impact from e-commerce, as shippers find other options.”
