THIS, LADIES AND GENTLEmen, is the 11th year the U.S. postal world has been considering legislative reform. At this point we’re about where we left off in the last Congress — that is, bills that seem to win bipartisan support at the committee level but get no further.
The Bush administration remains steadfast regarding the Civil Service Retirement System escrow and the assignment of military-related costs to postal retiree obligations. When the sponsors of H.R. 22 and S. 662 signaled their willingness to do the right thing and get rid of the escrow and return military-related retirement obligations to the Treasury, the administration’s folks blanched. For its part, the U.S. Postal Service remains reticent about the topic.
The administration’s spokespersons have labored mightily to explain why stiffing postal customers with an additional pension liability is good public policy — a lot of wind and water signifying nothing. No other federal agency has been subjected to the same treatment.
The USPS alone has been tagged with the responsibility to pay for any postal retiree’s military service, and the only rationale for it is that the USPS raises money of its own which is ripe for the Treasury’s taking. Why? Because the postal service has cash-paying customers that are there for the milking.
Shifting new non-postal retirement obligations to postage-paying citizens and businesses was a political money-grab of the worst kind. It adds to the USPS’ burden. It endangers future postal fiscal viability, and promises to impede, not facilitate, economic vitality and growth. It’s bad public policy. It’s bad fiscal policy, and it should be reversed, not justified via some cockamamie post-hoc rationale.
In short, the administration needs to recognize a reasonable approach to policymaking when it sees one, and do the right thing. End the escrow. Send back military retirement to the Treasury. Set right the postal system’s underlying legislative and regulatory framework, and let reform happen. To do anything less should be deemed absolutely unacceptable.
GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.
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