House Democrats introduced their own version of postal reform legislation last Thursday. The bill lacked some of the more controversial sections of a Republican-sponsored bill pending before the House Government Reform Committee.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), ranking minority member of the House Government Reform Committee, introduced The Postal Service Enhancement Act (HR-2535). It was cosponsored by eight other committee members, including three members of the House postal subcommittee chaired by Rep. John McHugh (R-NY).
While the bill excludes the controversial private law corporation provision in the GOP bill that allows the USPS to create a special corporation to oversee its competitive products and services, it includes a provision that permits the USPS to negotiate service agreements with large-volume mass mailers.
It also permits the USPS to: enter into negotiated service agreements with large, major mailers while being allowed to set rates for various products and services that compete with private businesses on its own. The measure also calls for the creation of a special commission to examine the postal service’s efficiency and ways to improve it.
Shortly after Waxman introduced the measure, McHugh, who wrote the Republican Postal Modernization Act of 1999 (HR-22), issued a statement blasting Waxman for abandoning the “nation’s responsibility to the U.S. Postal Service, its 850,000 employees and the 272 million American citizens who depend on universal service at uniform rates.”
He said Waxman’s bill was “a death sentence for the nation’s postal and delivery system [that] would obstruct any substantive proposal, regardless of its merits, from advancing from the Government Reform Committee to the House floor.”
McHugh also charged that the legislation fails to provide the USPS with the pricing and managerial tools to overcome declining mail volumes and revenue shortfalls. In addition he said it “utterly ignores the concerns of small business and private sector competitors who demand strong rules to protect the public interest from unfair competition” from the USPS.
There was no immediate response from Waxman.
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