Scarinci: The Postal Service Has an Identity Crisis

OPINION

The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 took the Postmaster General out of the Cabinet, ended Congressional political appointments and turned the nation’s biggest monopoly into a quasi/hybrid government-supported entity in the shell of a private business.  More than 50 years later, few can say the USPS is competitive or particularly reliable.

While Postmaster General Louis DeJoy claims that the USPS is within “striking distance” of its goal for 95% on-time delivery, it still takes an average of 3 days to get a letter.  Postage rates, as well as the bureaucracy within the USPS, continue to increase. Meanwhile, alternative parcel delivery services continue to improve their performance.

In April, President Joe Biden signed the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, which is the latest effort to overhaul the USPS. Postmaster General DeJoy is also working to implement a controversial 10-year plan for the agency.

Time will tell whether the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 will fix the problems at the USPS.  If it does not, perhaps it is time to reembrace the USPS as a full government entity and put the politics back into the mail.  Political appointees running the system would create some accountability that no longer exists.

As enshrined in the Postal Reorganization Act:

The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.

Early Days of the Postal Service

Since the earliest days of our country, the Postal Service has connected the country, providing a private, reliable, and affordable means to communicate, no matter the distance. The Founders recognized the power of establishing a reliable mail system. At the Second Continental Congress held in 1775, delegates appointed Benjamin Franklin to serve as America’s first postmaster general, a position he had held for the British colonies prior to the Revolutionary War.

The development of the postal system was also enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The Postal Clause in Article I, Section 8 authorized Congress “To establish Post Offices and post Roads” and “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” for executing this task. The Post Office Department was established in 1792 under the Postal Service Act.

To keep its citizens connected and informed, the government allowed publishers to ship newspapers and magazines at significantly discounted rates of one cent to locations within 100 miles, and one and a half cents to locations more than 100 miles away. The federal government also built miles of roads, and later railroads, to ensure that mail could be delivered to the farthest reaches of the growing nation. As the country expanded west, one of the first tasks of any new town was to build a post office. By 1860, there were 28,000 post offices in the United States.

 

 

For nearly 250 years, “neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays the [Postal Service’s] couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” However, there have been changes to both the structure of the agency and the methods of delivering the mail.

While mail was initially transported only from post office to post office, free daily delivery gradually expanded from major cities to rural towns. Over time, steamboats, railroads, motorized vehicles, and airplanes helped transport the mail faster. In 1913, the Postal Service added parcel delivery to its services.

Following World War II, the country’s mail volume skyrocketed. By the mid-1960s, the Post Office Department also faced growing deficits and outdated infrastructure. In 1966, the situation became so dire that the Chicago post office had 10 million pieces of undelivered mail.

“Our present postal system is obsolete; it has broken down; it is not what it ought to be for a nation of 200 million people.… And now is the time to act,” President Richard Nixon said in 1969. One year later, he signed the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which transformed the cabinet-level Post Office Department into an independent government agency, the United States Postal Service. The goal was to remove “politics” from the U.S. mail system and allow the new USPS to operate more like a traditional business. With the enactment of the Postal Reorganization Act, the USPS was also required to be largely self-funded through revenue generated by the sale of stamps and package deliveries rather than Congressional funding.

Maintaining solvency, however, became challenging in the wake of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which was enacted in 2006. Among other reforms at that time, the new law required the USPS to prefund retiree health insurance costs at least 50 years in advance. The pre-funding requirement resulted in billions of dollars of debt, which was compounded by the fiscal challenges of the Great Recession, the proliferation of email, and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 finally relieved the USPS of the burdensome obligation, while also instituting other reforms, such as requiring the continuation of six day a week mail delivery.

The Future of the USPS

Going forward, the USPS must still compete against private package delivery services, such as Amazon, FedEx, and the United Parcel Service. In many cases, private delivery companies are faster and more efficient. Many Americans continue to rely less on “traditional” mail, electing to pay their bills online and exchange email correspondence.

Given these continuing challenges, some question whether the USPS can function effectively as both a business and a public service. Much of the debate centers on what the Postal Service can do to remain “relevant” in the digital age, as well as whether it should add more revenue-generating services. However, rather than revolutionize the USPS into something it’s not, like a bank or a broadband provider, or completely privatize one of the country’s most trusted institutions, the better solution might be to allow the Postal Service to focus on delivering mail and packages, as the Founders initially intended.