Which Bill Would Have Made Mail Service Possible

The Senate on Tuesday evening passed the Postal service Reform Human activity, a massive $107 billion bailout of the post role that sailed through the Firm of Representatives in early Feb.

The bill, which cleared the Senate 79 to nineteen, now heads to President Joe Biden, who has indicated he intends to sign it into law.

You lot've probably noticed fewer mailboxes in your neighborhood, delays in your mail delivery and higher prices for postage. That's because the post office is facing long-continuing financial losses exacerbated past COVID-related staffing shortages and outdated applied science.

Co-ordinate to the USPS itself, the service volition incur a $160 billion shortfall over the side by side ten years.

This bill is intended to shore upward the postal service part's money woes, overhaul employees' retirement health benefits and develop an online dashboard with local and national commitment time data.

But critics say it won't stop planned price hikes or speed up service delays.

Here's what y'all need to know nigh the Mail service Reform Human action, the problems plaguing the post office and how they could touch on your mail service.

The postal service function's ongoing problems

COVID-19 has just compounded issues with the Mail service fueled by declining postal service use and outdated engineering science. In improver, the sharp increase in e-commerce deliveries fueled by the pandemic has been met with major staffing shortages.

According to the U.s.a. Government Accountability Office, the Post lost $87 billion between 2006 and 2020. In a written report released in February, between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2021, the bureau took an adapted loss of approximately $1.three billion.

Without congressional intervention, the USPS says it would have run out of operational upper-case letter by fiscal year 2023 and funds for retiree health benefits by 2030.

Democratic lawmakers have also accused Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed past and so-President Donald Trump, of intentionally undermining mail service alee of the 2020 presidential election to help discredit mail-in ballots. DeJoy denies the allegations.

The Postal Service Reform Act

The bipartisan bill is intended to fortify the postal service part's problematic finances and services, which were thrown into the spotlight during the 2020 presidential election, when the USPS attempted to scale back commitment every bit a record number of voters cast their ballots past post.

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, chair of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, said in a statement Tuesday that the reform human activity will "help to ensure that the Post continues to fulfill its universal service mission and make the investments necessary to raise network efficiency, introduce new products and services, and restore first-class service for all Americans."

Trimming mail delivery to five or even three days a week has been raised as a price-cutting measure for at to the lowest degree a decade. The new law would require mail service to go on six days a calendar week. And it would establish a operation dashboard giving real-time status updates on conditions at mailing facilities and on-time metrics for different categories of mail service.

Notably, it would likewise repeal a costly requirement that makes the service prepay employees' retirement health benefits -- an uncommon practice that "unfairly and unnecessarily burdens the Post," according to the White Business firm.

USPS retirees would instead enroll in Medicare, saving the agency tens of billions of dollars over the next decade.

USPS overhaul postal worker — The Mail service Reform Human action forgives $57 billion in debt and saves the USPS another $50 billion over the next 10 years.
William Thomas Cain/Getty Images

The beak too allows the Postal Service to offload some duties -- like issuing passports and hunting and line-fishing licenses -- to local, state and tribal governments.

Perhaps most substantially, the legislation would wipe clean $57 billion of the agency'south debt and save information technology another $l billion over the next decade.

Amazon, Hallmark, Publishers Clearing Business firm and many other corporations take supported the legislation, every bit have unions similar the National Association of Letter of the alphabet Carriers and the American Postal Workers Union.

Postmaster General DeJoy made passage of the Mail Reform Act a major part of his ten-yr programme to restructure the ailing service.

Flaws in the bill

Shifting postal workers' retirement health benefits to Medicare could save the USPS about $five.half-dozen billion through 2031, co-ordinate to the Congressional Upkeep Office. But it would add $five.v billion in Medicare costs, and probably more downward the line, NPR reported.

In add-on, Business firm Democrats pushed for provisions protecting mail-in voting in the pecker, mandating electric mail service trucks and restrictions on political donations by the postmaster general and the Mail's lath of governors.

Those provisions were peeled away during negotiations: Last month, the Mail service finalized plans to purchase up to 148,000 gasoline-powered mail trucks, ignoring requests from the White Firm and EPA to consider electric vehicles.

In a Feb stance slice for The Hill, Paul Steidler, a senior young man at the Lexington Establish, a conservative remember tank, ticked off a half-dozen problems with the Postal Service Reform Act -- including that it fails to ensure that the USPS is self-supporting and doesn't crave the bureau spell out its expenditures.

Most notably, Steidler said, the bill doesn't restore the quality and speed of mail service, which is slower now than it was l years ago.

Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, has pushed for Postal Service reforms for years. Just in February, he announced he couldn't support the electric current legislation.

"It doesn't get in enough," Issa said on the House floor. "This is non sufficient reform."

The Postal Service's program to save money

Shortly after taking office in June 2020, DeJoy appear a controversial 10-year strategy to overhaul the 230-year-old agency, addressing its mounting fiscal crisis and chipping abroad at its multibillion-dollar debt.

DeJoy's plan, which he calls Delivering for America, includes modernizing the agency'south aboriginal delivery-vehicle fleet in 2023 and enabling the USPS to motion a higher volume of mail for less coin than airplanes.

DeJoy besides proposed investments in postal facilities, equipment and infrastructure to help the USPS compete with private package-delivery companies like UPS, FedEx and Amazon.

Higher prices and mail delays remain

But DeJoy's Delivering for America plan also includes austerity measures, similar decommissioning hundreds of loftier-speed mail-sorting machines, eliminating overtime, banning additional trips to evangelize the mail and removing sidewalk mailboxes that become less than 25 stamped mail pieces per day.

The Postal Service has already raised the cost of stamps, while slowing service and reducing hours at postal service offices across the land.

Afternew service standards were enacted on Oct. ane, almost iv in 10 pieces of post were delivered late, taking upwardly to v days instead of the previously guaranteed i to 3 days.

US Postal Service bill — DeJoy's x-year plan has been criticized by some lawmakers, who say closures, slower service and price hikes will most impact seniors and lower-income Americans.
Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The slowdown in Oct followed an August cost hike, with a get-go-class postage rising from 55 to 58 cents, and another (temporary) hike to the cost of shipping a parcel during the 2021 holiday season. The independent Postal Regulatory Committee said there won't be some other increase until this summer, just regular price hikes will likely come up twice a yr starting in 2023.

In a July 2021 advisory opinion, the PRC expressed business concern that the proposed price and service changes had not been airplane pilot-tested. The commission also said the savings from the service won't pb to "much improvement" in the service's dire fiscal situation.

Some lawmakers have besides criticized DeJoy'due south agenda: Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia who chairs the subcommittee responsible for postal issues, called it "a callous plan that guarantees the death screw of the United States Postal Service."

Who is hitting hardest past mail slowdowns?

The Postal service'south strategy is expected to slow target commitment times for first-course postal service and periodicals by about 30% nationwide.

For some, it volition be an inconvenience, but for others -- including seniors who rely on prescription deliveries, small businesses that mail invoices and anyone who pays bills through the mail -- further delays could be devastating.

"Cuts to service standards for first-class mail, limiting hours at local post offices and making it more difficult for people to admission postal products would adversely bear upon USPS customers across the nation, including in rural and underserved communities," Peters said.

Who runs the US Postal Service?

While about Americans remember of the postmaster full general as the head of the postal service office, the Mail service is really overseen by a board of governors, consisting of up to nine members appointed by the president and approved by the Senate.

Louis DeJoy testifies at a Senate hearing in 2020 on Mail service operations during the pandemic.
United states Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Commission/Getty Images

Board members serve vii-yr terms and no more than five of the nine members may belong to the same political political party.

The board of governors appoints the postmaster general for an indefinite term and they are the only ones who tin can remove him or her from office.

Concerns about Postmaster Full general Louis DeJoy

The Mail service lath of governors, all selected by Trump, appointed DeJoy postmaster general on May 6, 2020, making him the commencement nominee in 2 decades with no prior postal experience.

As a erstwhile deputy finance chair for the Republican National Committee and local finance chair for the 2020 Republican National Convention, DeJoy has close ties to the GOP and Trump.

DeJoy has denied undermining post service in support of Trump'southward campaign to discredit post-in ballots. But in November 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration "continue[southward] to be deeply troubled" by DeJoy's potential conflicts of interest.

Can the postmaster general be replaced?

While the president cannot "fire" the postmaster general, Biden has already installed three new lath members: quondam Deputy Postmaster Full general Ron Stroman and quondam American Postal Workers Marriage General Counsel Anton Hajjar, both Democrats, and Amber McReynolds, caput of The National Vote at Home Found, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on expanding postal voting in the U.s.a..

Dorsum in November, Biden nominated candidates to supervene upon ii outgoing members, John Barger and lath chair Ron Bloom, a Trump appointee and former Obama assistants official who is finishing up a one-twelvemonth holdover term.

Biden's picks are Daniel Tangherlini, administrator of the U.s.a. General Services Assistants, and Derek Kan, deputy managing director of the Role of Direction and Budget. But in four months, the Senate has nevertheless to consider either nominee.

Should they be confirmed, Biden appointees would hold a five-to-four bulk and have the ability to remove DeJoy.

"Information technology's up to the board to make a determination about leadership," Psaki said in November, "simply we have continued concerns well-nigh the postmaster full general'due south leadership."