Minor changes in House postal subcommittee membership are not expected to cause any major delays in passage of postal reform legislation, Congress watchers in the DM industry said yesterday.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) is leaving the subcommittee and Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) may be reassigned.
“I don’t think those changes will cause much of a delay in the subcommittee’s consideration of postal reform legislation,” said Neal Denton, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers.
Gene Del Polito, president of the Advertising Mail Marketing Association, said that “the last thing anyone wants to see is any additional or unnecessary delays” in overhauling the U.S. Postal Service.
According to Robert Taub, subcommittee staff director, Sessions is leaving the panel to become a member of the House Rules Committee. Taub was unable to say if Fattah will continue as the panel’s ranking minority member or if he will be reassigned to either the House Appropriations or Ways and Means Committee. Neither Fattah nor House Democrat leaders, who are expected to announce most committee and subcommittee assignments later in the week, could be reached for comment.
“All we know for certain,” Taub said, is that Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), the sponsor of postal reform legislation, “stays as subcommittee chairman.”
Although approved by the subcommittee last September, McHugh’s postal reform bill died with the expiration of the 105th Congress because of inaction by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, then chaired by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN). It’s uncertain whether Burton will continue to chair the full committee.
McHugh is expected to reintroduce the subcommittee-approved version of the measure by the end of the week. Last week, working with Taub, McHugh tentatively scheduled hearings on the bill for early and late February and a subcommittee vote for sometime in March.
Lee Cassidy, National Federation of Nonprofits executive director, predicted that McHugh’s bill, which won’t become law for at least another year, will be “significantly amended” to reflect many of the changes sought by the USPS, which he described as “more modest than those that had been suggested previously.”
McHugh’s bill would split the Postal Service’s products and services into those that are competitive and those that are non-competitive. The USPS said it would like to see the measure include a process for itself and the Postal Rate Commission to develop a plan that would recognize the complexity and financial risks of splitting revenues, costs, assets, liabilities, and financing of competitive and noncompetitive products.
The USPS has also proposed excluding certain operational costs from being considered in the rate-making process.
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