Plan to Reduce Mail Deliveries Drawing National Attention

The plan to reduce postal service deliveries from six to five days for rural routes is drawing national attention. A recent Ed Show (Ed Schultz) on MSNBC brought up the subject and charged that it was part of a systematic attempt by the Congressional Republicans to destroy the middle class. A news release by the Postal Service printed in last week’s Sheridan Express cited what they said was strong public support for such a move. However, as Schultz pointed out, peoples’ attitudes would change once they found out that their Netflix movies would not arrive on Saturdays like normal thanks to the postal cutbacks.

The Washington Post, Association Press, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal all incorrectly reported that the recent financial crisis by the Postal Service was the result of more and more people relying on emails and free forms of communication instead of the Postal Service. However, the present crisis started after the Republican Congress in 2006, following the elections, passed a bill requiring them to prefund their retiree benefits for the next 75 years within a 10 year time frame. This bill was signed by President George W. Bush. As Schultz pointed out, without that requirement, the Postal Service would have been $1.5 billion in the profit.

$11.1 billion of that money to prefund retiree packages was due this year; however, the Postal Service has defaulted on that obligation. The present move of reducing mail deliveries to five days will only save the Postal Service $2 billion, far short of the amount needed to meet their obligations. Therefore, Schultz said that he feared that the next step would be two or three day deliveries. The US Senate, with bipartisan support, passed a bill that would have modified these requirements; however, Schultz charged that Congressman Darrell Issa, who chairs the US House committee responsible for that bill, was refusing to bring it to a hearing in the House. Schultz charged that the UPS, a competitor to the Postal Service, was one of Issa’s big donors and that Federal Express contributed extensively to Republican congressmen in order to hold up any efforts to lift these obligations.

Congressman Sam Graves wrote a resolution in support of keeping six day mail deliveries supported by a bipartisan coalition of Congressmen a few years ago.

Schultz said that it was a matter of keeping middle class jobs and pointed out that the Postal Service hired more veterans than any other company. The Postal Service does not receive taxpayer dollars and relies on sales for all of its income. The establishment of the Postal Service as well as roads and bridges to support mail delivery is specifically called for in the Constitution.

There were two guests on the program. One, Congressman Gerald Connolly (D-VA), said that the Postal Service did not have either the Constitutional or statutory authority to reduce mail deliveries to five days. He said that the Postal Service had not presented any analysis to justify such a move and that lost revenue and lost business from such a move could be as much as $5 billion, further accelerating losses by the Postal Service. The figure came from confidential 2012 USPS-commissioned market research obtained by Connolly’s office, which also cited a possible 7.7% in mail volume reduction.

The other guest, Audrey Hume of the Missouri Rural Letter Carriers Association, said that many rural communities rely on Saturday deliveries especially for prescription drugs. She charged that Washington had ignored the needs of workers with their plan and said that many businesses also rely on Saturday deliveries.
Connolly expanded on his remarks in a letter to the Postal Service dated February 6th co-authored by Congressman Sam Graves requesting legal justification for such a move. He said that since the USPS had repeatedly requested statutory authority from Congress to transition to a five day week, that was a clear acknowledgement that absent Congressional action, they lacked statutory authority to do so. For nearly three decades, Congress has repeatedly passed legislation prohibiting the Postal Service from transitioning to a five day week.

Specifically, Connolly and Graves cited Article I in the US Congress covering powers conferred on Congress as well as the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, Public Law 112-74. As quoted in the letter, the latter law states, “6-day delivery and rural delivery of mail shall continue at not less than the 1983 level.” The letter also requested legal justification from the US Attorney General’s office as well as the Chairman of the US Postal Regulatory Commission as to their respective opinions regarding such a decision.