Postmaster general to Congress: Don’t forget about us

The Senate spent much of the current week debating gun control measures, an issue that supporters say isn’t going anywhere. Lawmakers are also likely to discuss immigration reform, and continue their longstanding debate over tax and fiscal issues this year.

{mosads}Still, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the chairman of the Homeland Security panel, and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the House Oversight chairman, have both said they came close to reaching a postal deal at the end of last year, and have suggested that they believe a deal can be reached soon.

Donahoe also said in his Friday speech that he believes Congress will pass a postal bill this year.

The Postal Service lost close to $16 billion in fiscal 2012, most of it from defaults on required prepayments for future retiree healthcare. The USPS also recently backed down from a plan to end Saturday delivery of first-class mail, a change it says would save $2 billion a year, after Congress passed a spending bill requiring six-day delivery.

At his Friday speech, Donahoe said the USPS would eventually need a bailout unless Congress gave the service more flexibility, through proposals like those found in USPS’s five-year business plan. A bailout, Donahoe said, would cost $58 billion through 2017, and be the worst possible outcome.

The Postal Service’s five-year plan includes shifting out of federally sponsored healthcare and into a plan the agency itself would sponsor – a move the postmaster general said would end the prefunding requirement. The USPS also wants more flexibility in how it prices postal products, and still wants to limit Saturday delivery.

Some Democrats and liberals have called for rolling back the prefunding requirement, which has a roughly $5.5 billion a year price tag, and have said the Postal Service’s plan to scale back Saturday delivery was a mistake.

“What is needed is a dynamic business plan for the future to take advantage of the many opportunities for growth, including in the exploding package delivery market,” Fredric Rolando, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said in response to Donahoe’s Friday speech.

Issa and others sounded open to making prefunding more affordable at a hearing this week.
But Donahoe also stressed Friday that the agency needed to ensure that it was prepared for retirees.

“If we expect employees in this organization to get benefits, we’re responsible for paying for it,” the postmaster general said.