An Ohio Congressman has called for the appointment of a special Presidential Commission to study the future of the U.S. Postal Service.
Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) last week asked fellow House members to join him in calling for the study.
Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce, who has been calling for the appointment of such a panel in recent years, urged direct marketers to support the proposal. He said it was time the White House step in and act to resolve the “legislative deadlock’ on postal reform.
In a letter to colleagues, LaTourette said that good faith efforts on the part of past Congressional bodies were not successful in developing a legislative consensus on meaningful postal reform. He stressed the need for the commission.
The Bush Administration would have approval over the commission’s budget and the USPS would finance the panel, given up to 24 months to complete the task, the letter stated.
“This is just something to get the ball rolling, to generate more interest in postal issues,” said Irit Mizrahi a spokesperson for LaTourette.
But Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), who has spearheaded postal reform in Congress “believes that a Presidential Commission is unnecessary and would waste valuable time,” Dana Johnson, McHugh’s press secretary said.
“Any study that would be done by a Presidential Commission has already been undertaken over the last seven years as postal reform has been debated in Congress,” she said.
McHugh has been working with Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) House Government Reform Committee chairman and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) the panel’s ranking minority member, to develop a bipartisan postal reform bill, Johnson said.
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