Senators outline path to lift up Postal Service

A bipartisan group of senators has announced a plan to vastly revamp how the U.S. Postal Service operates, in a bid to help lift the agency up from the brink of insolvency.

The bill — from Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.) — would restructure how the Postal Service deals with a large payment for future retirees’ healthcare benefits and keep the agency from scrapping Saturday delivery for at least two years.

It would also give the agency access to funds to help transition as many as 100,000 employees into retirement, reform how the service deals with workers compensation claims and move away from door-to-door delivery routes.

At a news conference announcing their plan, the senators stressed that USPS, various stakeholders and unions — not to mention House Republicans, who have mapped out their own path forward for the agency — would not like all the planks in their bill.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told lawmakers in September that the Postal Service was on track to lose $10 billion in the 2011 fiscal year, and would also face steep losses in 2012.

USPS has faced a loss in mail volume of more than 20 percent since 2006, in the face of continued technological advancements and an at-best sluggish economy.

“In our bill, we are asking the Postal Service — directing the Postal Service — to make some painful choice to reduce its costs and not simply to slash services and raise prices,” said Collins, ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“We need to be able to demonstrate that we can govern,” added Carper, chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee that oversees USPS. “That we can take on a big problem. That we can solve that problem. And this is a big one. The situation is dire.”

The Senate bill builds on separate USPS proposals that Collins and Carper already released this year and is scheduled to be marked up next week. Lieberman is chairman of the full Homeland Security Committee, while Brown is ranking member on the relevant subcommittee.

The senators’ plan also comes not long after the House GOP plan, spearheaded by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Dennis Ross (R-Fla.), cleared the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee without a Democratic vote.

The House and Senate plans have some significant differences, with the House plan empowering a new oversight board to recommend post office closures and other ways to cut costs.

But a spokesman for Issa said he applauded his Senate colleagues for examining how to fundamentally overhaul USPS.

“We look forward to reviewing their legislation once it is introduced and continuing discussions to find a bipartisan and bicameral approach to reforming and protecting the long-term viability of the Postal Service,” spokesman Ali Ahmad said in a news release.

Stakeholder groups were also pleased with the senators’ product.

“From what we’ve seen so far, this bill is a smart and balanced approach that can shore up the Postal Service and help preserve the 8 million private sector jobs that rely on the mail,” said Art Sackler, coordinator for the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, an outfit that represents private-sector groups that want USPS to survive.

The Senate bill would restructure the current $5.5 billion annual payment for retiree healthcare that USPS is required to make, and allows the agency and postal unions to explore other healthcare agreements that could also reduce the service’s healthcare liability for future retirees.

Congress recently pushed the healthcare payment to mid-November, after the agency said it would not make the payment by the September deadline.

The measure also gives USPS access to an almost $7 billion overpayment into a federal retirement fund, roughly a quarter of which would likely be used to incentivize 100,000 postal workers into retirement. The rest of the funds could be used to shore up other financial areas for USPS, which said in September it was fast approaching its $15 billion borrowing limit with the federal government.

As with the House bill, the senators are pushing to move USPS away from door-to-door delivery and toward distributing at sidewalks or in centralized neighborhood locations.

The bill would also allow USPS to consider moving to five-day delivery in two years, but only if it had found ways to blunt the impact on consumers and meet other goals, and to offer non-postal products.

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