Biden signs reform bill for US Postal Service
Six-days-a-week mail delivery preserved
WASHINGTON – A sweeping overhaul of the U.S. Postal Service meant to shore up the popular but beleaguered agency’s financial future and cement six-days-a-week mail delivery was signed into law Wednesday by President Joe Biden.
The legislation cleared Congress last month after fully a dozen years of discussion that took on a new sense of urgency amid widespread complaints about mail service delays. Officials had repeatedly warned that without congressional action, the Postal Service would run out of cash by 2024.
“The Postal Service is central to our economy and essential to rural America,” Biden said. He added that mailmen and women deliver 4 million prescriptions per day, along with letters, consumer goods and even live animals, “often to parts of the country that private carriers can’t or won’t or aren’t required to reach.”
The final legislation achieved rare, bipartisan support by scrapping some of the more controversial proposals and settling on core ways to save the service. Delivering the mail is among the most popular things the government does, with 91% of Americans having a favorable opinion of the Postal Service, according to a Pew Research Center poll released in 2020.
The bill signing came the same day the Postal Service announced it plans to raise rates effective July 10. Under the proposal submitted to the Postal Regulatory Commission, the cost of a
first-class Forever stamp would increase by 2 cents to 60 cents.
The Postal Service said the increase, which is less than the annual rate of inflation, will help the agency implement Postmaster General Louis Dejoy’s 10year plan to stabilize agency finances.
Lawmakers from both parties attended the signing ceremony and the mood was jovial.
The Postal Service Reform Act lifts budget requirements that have contributed to the agency’s red ink, and spells out that mail must be delivered six days a week, except for federal holidays, natural disasters and some other situations.
Postage sales and other services were supposed to sustain the Postal Service, but it has suffered 14 straight years of losses. Growing worker compensation and benefit costs, plus steady
declines in mail volume, have exacerbated losses, even as the service delivers to 1 million additional locations every year.
The new law ends a requirement that the Postal Service finance workers’ health care benefits ahead of time for the next 75 years – an obligation that private companies and federal agencies do not face.
Now, future retirees will enroll in Medicare, while other health plans and the Postal Service cover only current retirees’ actual health care costs that aren’t paid for by the federal health insurance program for older people,
To measure the agency’s progress in improving its service, the law requires it to set up an online dashboard that would be searchable by ZIP code to show how long it takes to deliver letters and packages.