A bill has been introduced in Congress that would prohibit the U.S. Postal Service from increasing the price of mailing a first class letter unless it has sufficient stocks of one-cent stamps.
Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) introduced the measure on May 19 in response to a shortage of one-cent stamps earlier in the year when the USPS raised the price of mailing a first class letter to 33 cents from 32 cents. Many post offices ran out of the stamps as a result.
The bill, the Postal Rate Transition Act (H.R. 1859), would prohibit the USPS from implementing any first class rate increase until it tells Congress how many one-cent stamps it printed to facilitate last January’s rate increase, how it determined the number of stamps it needed versus the number of stamps that would have been printed without a rate increase and the cost of printing the stamps.
Postal officials said they do not comment on pending legislation.
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