Government affairs

The bipartisan majority of House members who support H. Res. 30 grew to 224 on Tuesday when Rep. David Price (D-NC) signed on as a co-sponsor. H. Res. 30 is a resolution “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Postal Service should take all appropriate measures to ensure the continuation of its 6-day mail delivery service.”

Make sure yours is on the list: Find out here, then go here to look up members’ contact information and ask yours to sign on.

Wrong by half

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its second look at the Postal Service’s projected savings from a reduction in mail service from six days to five and declared that USPS would save only about $10.9 billion over 10 years—about half of what the Postal Service projected would be saved by its modified plan.

Of course, the CBO accepted the Postal Service’s dubious claim that eliminating Saturday delivery would not have a large effect on its revenues and volume, while NALC is convinced that ending six-day service would lose more money than it might save.

“It should be obvious to everyone by now that ending Saturday delivery and degrading the postal network would do nothing to solve the real financial problem the Postal Service faces,” President Rolando said, referring to the congressional mandate that the Postal Service, alone among all public agencies and private companies, pre-fund future retiree health benefits for decades into the future, a requirement that is 100 percent responsible for the Postal Service’s so-called “losses.”

Eliminating Saturday mail also would make no sense because it would stop the postal turnaround in its tracks by driving mail—and revenue—out of the system, hurting the residential and business customers who rely on Saturday delivery.

Further, postal finances continue to steadily improve as the economy recovers from the worst recession in 80 years and as increasing online shopping sends package revenues ever higher,” he said. So far this year, the Postal Service has reported a $1 billion profit excluding the cost of pre-funding.

NALC joins the other postal unions and a broad, bipartisan coalition of postal stakeholders to continue our call on Congress to come up with a postal bill that’s designed to maintain and strengthen the Postal Service—a Constitution-based agency that provides Americans with the world's most affordable delivery network without a dime of taxpayer money.