A Balanced Approach to Reforming the Postal Service
By Dana Hyde
Thank you for signing a petition about the U.S. Postal Service. We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on WhiteHouse.gov and your concerns about the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) in a challenging economy. The Postal Service is vital to the Nation’s commerce and communications, which is why we must act quickly to make the changes necessary to ensure its viability for years to come.
Postal volumes have dropped precipitously in recent years due to longer-run shifts in communication technologies and other economic factors. As a result, USPS accrued losses of $8.5 billion in 2010, and faced financial insolvency on September 30th. Without reform it is forecast to sustain greater losses this year and next.
However, the Postal Service needs more than just short term financial relief at this time; it needs a comprehensive plan for reform to ensure that it can be flexible and competitive in a changing marketplace. There are multiple ways to provide relief and reform, but the Administration’s proposal in The President’s Plan for Economic Growth and Job Creation [PDF] represents a balanced approach for postal workers, USPS, consumers, and taxpayers.
More specifically, the proposal includes a set of near-term financial relief measures that will provide the Postal Service with the time necessary to restructure its operations and take advantage of flexibilities in the proposal, such as the ability to cooperate with state and local governments and modest pricing flexibility.
In the longer term, we are proposing to help the Postal Service reduce its excessive operating costs by providing the flexibility to gradually move to 5-day delivery, beginning in 2013. Under USPS’ plan for how it would use this authority, post offices would still remain open on Saturdays, Express Mail deliveries would still be made 7 days a week, post office box deliveries would still be made on Saturdays, and USPS would continue to make Saturday deliveries in the busy weeks leading up to the winter Holidays. These and other cost structuring actions will ensure that the Postal Service remains viable for the medium- and longer-term.
We believe USPS’ financial situation demands such reforms and the Administration’s package includes provisions to reduce the impact for USPS workers and customers. We share petitioners’ concern for the health and viability of the USPS and developed this plan with the best interest of this vital institution in mind.
As we work to get our Nation back on a sustainable fiscal path, the Administration is making tough choices across the Federal government and asking everyone to do their fair share. These shared sacrifices are not easy, but together with investments in our economic growth and job creation [PDF], they will make us stronger and more competitive for the future.
Dana Hyde is Associate Director for General Government Programs, Office of Management and Budget
Leave it to upper postal management to preach slash and burn to “save” the USPS. I would have thought that growing the business wouldnt include cutting a day of service. Its to bad that they just dont wake up and see that the $5.5 billion a year is why the USPS is in the red. Someone is making a lot of money from not pushing what will really make the post office operate in the black. Yet the PMG and his posse of clowns all pull down hefty bonuses every year no matter what color the ink is. Sound like bad bussiness practices to me.
Preach it John, and it’s so sickening that the White House would rather put out this nonsense about “longer run shifts in communications technologies” being the reason the USPS is hemorrhaging money, instead of the ridiculous pension mandate!
Last I checked, they still don’t have an “app” for sending paper checks, birthday cards, and especially parcels – even as we move forward the rapid growth of ecommerce could be a boom for USPS’s cheaper and superior options, but not if we end up cutting back on delivery days.
The foxes are guarding the hen house big time on this issue.
I have an idea Dana. How about removing the Congressional mandate requiring the Postal Service to pre-pay seventy five years worth of future retiree health benefits? Amazingly the USPS would be in the black if this mandate was never imposed.
Another sad situation in America. Knock the working man down, begin the demise of the USPS, start the process toward privatization….a real shame.