Post office essential to economy

Local postal workers delivered an important message recently when they protested against a budding Trump administrative initiative to privatize the United States Postal Service.

Members of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation should hear that message and join a broad, bipartisan effort in Congress to fix, rather than kill, the postal service.

Wednesday, the postal service proposed a record 10 percent increase in the price of a stamp for a 1-ounce letter, from 50 cents to 55 cents.

The price for each additional ounce would decline slightly.

As more correspondence, billpaying and advertising has gone digital, the postal service’s revenue from first class mail steadily has declined.

Most recently, it fell from $28.4 billion in fiscal year 2015 to $25.6 billion in 2017.

Like other delivery enterprises, the post office has profited from the rise in e-commerce.

Package revenues were $19.5 billion in 2017, up from $15 billion in 2015 — directly contradicting President Donald Trump’s claim that the service is negatively affected by a contract with Amazon under which it handles the final leg of many of the retailing giant’s deliveries.

In addition to the proposed letter-rate increase, the Postal Service Board of Governors also asked for a package rate increase of 5.9 percent, which will increase the cost of delivering its standard small box from $7.20 to $7.90.

In all, the USPS total accumulated deficit is $58.7 billion.

Led by Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, 26 senators and more than 190 House members of both parties have joined in opposition to privatizing the postal service.

They are correct that privatization likely would leave rural areas with limited or no service. They also are correct that the postal service’s problems do not flow solely from operations and cite increasing revenue from package delivery to prove the point.

Rather, they point to a 2006 law that requires the service to prefund employees’ health care benefits, unlike every other federal agency and private company, which pay premiums as they come due.

A Senate bill introduced by McCaskill and several other senators would phase out the pre-payment over four years and, beginning in the fifth year, save the postal service nearly $6 billion every year.

The postal service remains essential to the economy.

Rather than killing it, Congress should take up the measure to eliminate the unreasonable up-front health care payments and put the service on stable footing.

— The Citizens’ Voice, The Associated Press

Led by Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, 26 senators and more than 190 House members of both parties have joined in opposition to privatizing the postal service. They are correct that privatization likely would leave rural areas with limited or no service.