CRIES OF OUTRAGE from newspaper editorial writers against “junk mail” seem to come in waves. The latest ripple is opposition to House Postal Subcommittee chairman John McHugh’s Postal Modernization Act of 1999 (H.R. 22), intended to bring the U.S. Postal Service into the 21st century.
The newspaper industry, United Parcel Service (UPS) and other opponents to H.R. 22 have gone full-bore to fashion the image of a modernized postal service that would run amok. If the New York Republican’s proposal finds its way into law, they say, the USPS will set about destroying private businesses.
Mailers, however, know their businesses, customers and the nation have benefited from a postal system designed to provide universal service at a uniform price. One of the great things about it is that the price to send a letter 3,000 miles is no different than to send one across town. Unless our postal system is modernized to better reflect the needs of a changing economy, this may go the way of the gooney bird.
Heaven knows, those who seek to kill H.R. 22 couldn’t care less about universal service or uniform prices. The brown truck crowd has clearly demonstrated how it would run things if it had its druthers-by surcharging the postal system to death.
As any direct marketer can tell you, when you try to send a parcel to a residence by UPS, it gets hit with a residential delivery surcharge. If the parcel is going to a rural area, there’s a surcharge. So, if you have the “misfortune” of living at a rural address, you’re clobbered with two surcharges.
If that’s the kind of postal system Congress, publishers and members of the American Postal Workers Union envision, they ought to heed UPS and the newspapers’ pleas to kill H.R. 22.
But if they see America is better served by a system providing universal mail delivery at a price that’s fair to everyone, maybe they should look at the arguments raised by the bill’s opponents with more than just a wary eye.
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