For the past five years, those who have a stake in preserving the mail delivery system have been laboring on legislation to ensure that the U.S. postal infrastructure doesn’t deteriorate like a neglected two-lane road alongside an interstate highway.
Despite all the noise about the wiring of America, we will still need an effective way to get paper-based communications and packages to every home and business in the nation. The trouble is, today’s delivery system, run largely by the U.S. Postal Service, may collapse financially under the weight of a dated legislative and regulatory framework.
Efforts to craft a bill capable of broad support, however, have been frustrated by the various interested parties’ inability to define precisely what they’ll need from any future postal organization.
Mailers have said consistently in testimony presented to Congress that they need universal mail service. Everyone talks about universal service, but no one’s ever clearly defined what it is, how it can be provided or how it should be funded. While the postal reform debate has alternately simmered and boiled over regularly, its heat has been dissipated rather than being channeled to determine what universal service is all about.
One of the key features of House postal subcommittee chairman John McHugh’s Postal Modernization Act is a provision calling for a study of the USPS’ universal service obligation. While there is the usual lack of agreement over how the study should be conducted, virtually all participants in the five-year-long postal food fight agree that such an effort is sorely needed.
If authorizing a congressional or presidential review of universal service is the only thing that comes from our postal reform work, then the whole endeavor will have been worth it. If universal service is the goal, there are any number of ways it can be provided. So it’s essential that we understand all the alternatives before we walk away from the argument resigned to let America’s postal system crash and burn.
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