In an apparent move to undermine a colleague’s legislative plan to overhaul the U.S. Postal Service, Rep. Duncan Hunter has introduced a bill that would prohibit the USPS from offering any commercial non-postal service that did not exist before Jan. 1, 1994.
Hunter’s bill, the Postal Service Core Business Act of 1999, (HR-198), conflicts sharply with postal reform legislation sponsored by Rep. John McHugh, chairman of the House postal subcommittee. Although the measure was referred to the House Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), it first must be reviewed by McHugh’s panel.
Given McHugh’s push to overhaul the USPS, the chances of his subcommittee approving the measure range from slim to non-existent, according to Capitol Hill observers.
Hunter’s legislation, which has nine cosponsors, eight from California and one from Arizona, would prohibit the USPS the from offering a variety of services that its introduced in recent years,
They include volume retail photocopying, commercial packaging and mailing services, gift-wrapping services, notary services, office supply and envelope sales, and Internet services like the Postal Service’s ill-fated WINGS (Web Interactive Network of Government Services), abandoned after losing more than $1 million over two years, and Deliver America program, an interactive catalog shopping program that was scrapped after losing $3.2 million in just over one year of operation.
The USPS, under McHugh’s bill, would permit the USPS to set many of its own rates, split its products and services into two categories: –noncompetitive and competitive — with a private corporation overseeing the latter, while increasing the Postal Rate Commission’s authority over the USPS.
Gene Del Polito, Advertising Mail Marketing Association president, blasted Hunter’s bill as “bad policy and bad law,” which if passed would see the USPS “pecked to death by certain people for reasons of their own or others who want to take the postal service apart piecemeal” to give “gold to its competitors.”
Added Direct Marketing Association senior vice president, Jerry Cerasale, “This bill really ties the postal service’s hands, keeping it where it was in 1994 instead of letting it grow.” The DMA, he continued, wants the USPS to grow, to remain financially viable. Cerasale described Hunter’s proposal as “too simplistic a way at looking at the postal service compared to McHugh’s bill which is much more open and helps the postal service.”
Neither Hunter, nor any of the measure’s cosponsors, including Reps Roscoe G. Bartlett, Mary Bono, Ken Calvert, Christopher Cox, Randy Cunningham, Ron Packard, Dana Rohrabacher, and James Talent, all Republicans from California, and Rep. Bob Stump, a Republican from Arizona, would comment and McHugh could not be reached.
Postal officials also would not comment, a standard policy on pending legislation.
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