Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH), will ask the House postal subcommittee to eliminate the section of the Postal Modernization Act of 1999 that authorizes the U.S. Postal Service to create a private law corporation to oversee its competitive products and services before sending it to the full Government Reform Committee for consideration today, according to unconfirmed reports.
If true, the future of postal reform legislation, sponsored by the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. John McHugh, (R-NY), appears uncertain.
“If [LaTourette] does introduce that amendment, it will probably include the provision of Rep. Duncan Hunter’s bill (HR-198) to limit the postal service to just delivering mail,” said Gene A. Del Polito, Advertising Mail Marketing Association president.
Hunter introduced the measure in January shortly after McHugh reintroduced an updated version of a postal reform bill that won subcommittee approval before dying in committee with the expiration of the 105th Congress.
According to Del Polito any move to eliminate the private law corporation provision “will bust the McHugh’s bill wide open and it could turn out to be a battle that could see the start of its dismantling of HR-22.”
With industry organizations divided over the private law corporation provision, a letter from the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America and The Bankers Roundtable to McHugh and Dan Burton (R-IN), chair of the full Government Reform Committee, added to the uncertainty of the bill’s future before the subcommittee.
Calls to LaTourette’s office for comment were not returned by press time.
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