(Direct Newsline)—Mailing industry groups are hoping against hope that Congress will be able to pass some “emergency” postal reform legislation after the election that could stave off postal rate hikes of 15% or more.
Several are stepping up efforts to get their constituents to lobby individual members of Congress.
As Congress gets ready to adjourn before the election, it left unresolved House and Senate bills that would have attempted to reform the USPS.
One key part of those bills would have relieved the USPS from having to pay money into an escrow account. The account would hold funds it overpaid into the Civil Service Retirement System to cover pensions of former employees.
In the fall of 2002, the USPS discovered that it had overpaid the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) fund that provides for its retired employees by more than $70 billion. But in order for the USPS to reclaim that money it needed congressional approval (Direct Newsline, April 8, 2003).
The industry then lobbied Congress fervently and got the payments obligations transferred to the U.S. Treasury Dept. Earlier this year, however, the Bush administration, apparently wary of new spending schemes, seemed ready to saddle the USPS with pension obligations once again, according to Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce.
If passed, such legislation would return to the U.S. Treasury Department the obligation to pay the civil service and military retirement costs of former postal employees. This could save the USPS as much as $70 billion, said Neal Denton, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers.
“Congress might come back a little next week but basically we’re looking toward possible lame duck session for the 108th [current] Congress,” said Lou Mastria, spokesman for the Direct Marketing Association.
“Mailers also need temporary relief to release escrow money to forestall a double digit rate case which could come as soon as the first quarter of 2005—that’s two or three months,” he stressed.
“There’s a window between January and April before the postal service files a new rate case,” said Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce. “We need to have an emergency CSRS relief bill passed before then.”
Meanwhile, bills that passed out of committee in both the House and Senate that would have made fundamental changes to the USPS, appeared to be headed for death at the end of this Congress and must be reintroduced in during next session.
Even though the bills, S 2468 and HR 4341, had both passed their respective committees in the House and Senate, neither one got to the floor of either chamber, despite assurances that they would.
Over the past several months, the DMA, PostCom, the Alliance and other groups have been doing things like encouraging their members to invite their Congress people to visit their facilities in their districts as well as write lots of letters.
“They should invite their representatives to tour their plants to let to let them know that this is a real industry that employs real people,” said Mastria.
Said Del Polito: “The most important thing now is not for businesses to explain what postal; reform is but to tell their congressional representatives that it’s really gonna hurt them if postal reform is not passed and maybe they can get them to go to the committee chairmen and put some pressure on them.”
How would postal reform bills fare during the next administration?
“Nobody can predict what’s gonna happen in Washington,” said Denton.
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