US Postal Service

Last year, Lydia Saad reported at Gallup:

Americans are maintaining a mostly positive view of the job each of eight different high-profile federal departments and agencies is doing, out of 13 such entities measured in a new Gallup poll. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) remains the top-rated agency, with 74% saying it is doing an “excellent” or “good” job. This conforms with its No. 1 status in all prior years Gallup measured it, including 2014, 2017 and 2018.

Amy Werbel at Government Executive:

[Americans] view the USPS as a vital civic institution – one that despite a crisis brought on by massive debts and falling revenue continues to reliably deliver medicine, communications and absentee ballots that allow Americans to vote safely during the coronavirus pandemic. Equally important, the postal service delivers a common bond that has helped shape American society for more than 250 years. Research for my recent book on the postal inspector Anthony Comstock introduced me to the prominent role the postal service played in enabling Americans to conceive of themselves as a singular nation.
…
Today there are few elements of American life that unite us. We have no national health service, which amid COVID-19 is uniting the United Kingdom in “fellow feeling,” as Queen Elizabeth II described recently.What we do have is the USPS, a constitutionally acknowledged resource that still connects us all. Today it operates 31,322 post offices, as far-flung as Pago Pago in American Samoa and Hinsdale, New Hampshire, the nation’s oldest continuously operating post office. .. Unlike its private sector competitors, the USPS does not depend on profitability, and keeps its promise to reach all Americans, no matter the cost. Half a million postal workers continue to make this equitable service possible, providing binding threads that draw us together in our American version of “fellow feeling.”

Trump v. Amazon

Mike Allen at Axios:

What we're hearing: Trump has talked about changing Amazon’s tax treatment because he’s worried about mom-and-pop retailers being put out of business.

• A source who’s spoken to POTUS: “He’s wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after Amazon with antitrust or competition law."
• Trump’s deep-seated antipathy toward Amazon surfaces when discussing tax policy and antitrust cases. The president would love to clip CEO Jeff Bezos’ wings. But he doesn’t have a plan to make that happen.

Behind the president's thinking: Trump's wealthy friends tell him Amazon is destroying their businesses. His real estate buddies tell him — and he agrees — that Amazon is killing shopping malls and brick-and-mortar retailers.

• Trump tells people Amazon has gotten a free ride from taxpayers and cushy treatment from the U.S. Postal Service.
• “The whole post office thing, that's very much a perception he has,” another source said. “It's been explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate and that the post office actually makes a ton of money from Amazon."
• Axios' Ina Fried notes: The post office actually added delivery on Sunday in some cities because Amazon made it worthwhile.
• Trump also pays close attention to the Amazon founder's ownership of The Washington Post, which the president views as Bezos’ political weapon.

I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018

Lobbying: Going Postal

Legislation on reforming the US Postal Service has become urgent in light of plans to end Saturday delivery and close thousands of post offices.  (The changes could affect elections by slowing delivery of mail ballots.)  Open Secrets reports (emphasis added) that a wide array of interests are in the fight:

They include some of the heaviest hitters OpenSecrets.org keeps track of, like postal unions and FedEx, as well as groups from more obscure corners of the lobbying world, like the Envelope Manufacturers of America (yes, envelopes have lobbyists)
...
Of course, lawmakers have heard from FedEx and UPS, both of whom have a lot riding on the viability of their biggest competitor. Both also qualify as heavy hitters on OpenSecrets.org for their intense Washington presence on the lobbying and campaign finance scene (both companies even own townhouses near the United States Capitol building to host fundraising events for lawmakers).

And, with tens of thousands of public employees affected, the unions and groups that represent those workers have been out in force: there's the National Association of Letter Carriers, and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, both of which are affiliates of union heavyweight AFL-CIO.

There's also the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, which represents mail-carriers far from the big metropolises. The National Association of Postmasters goes to bat for managers, and the National Star Route Mail Contractor Association backs contractors the post office uses to ship mail. The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association had to say something about this, since most suggestions involve changes to the pension fund for postal employees.

And those are just the heaviest of the heavy hitters in the fight. Check out the full spectrum of groups that have lobbied on the two pieces of legislation, including some surprising names.

• 21st Century Postal Service Act
• Postal Reform Act of 2011

Elections and the Postal Service

Back in December, The New York Times reported:

The post office had bad news on Monday for all those who like to pop a check into the mail to pay a bill due the next day: don’t count on it.

The United States Postal Service said it planned to largely eliminate next-day delivery for first-class mail as part of its push to cut costs and reduce its budget deficit. Currently, more than 40 percent of first-class mail is delivered in one day.

The agency said the slower delivery would result from its decision to shut about half of its 487 mail processing centers nationwide. The move is expected to eliminate about 28,000 jobs and increase the distance that mail must travel between post offices and processing centers. It would be the first reduction in delivery standards for first-class mail in 40 years.

The change will have a significant impact on elections.  In 2010, 18.2 percent of votes came in by mail.  And many voters popped the ballot into the mailbox the day before the election, expecting it to arrive in time.

Timm Herdt writes in The Ventura County Star:

In the last statewide primary election two years ago, more than 12,500 mail-in ballots in Riverside County were nearly invalidated because of what postal officials described as "a change in process" that caused them to be delivered after Election Day.

They were ultimately counted, but only after a judge ordered it.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen now worries that an election nightmare on a much larger scale could be repeated this year unless the Postal Service delays its planned closure of 18 mail processing centers in California until after November's presidential election.

Bowen is appealing to postal officials and members of Congress to extend for six months a moratorium on the closures that is scheduled to expire May 15.

"This has the potential to leaves thousands and thousands of ballots uncounted," Bowen said Wednesday. "We need the post office not to do it. It would be a profound disservice to democracy."

Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/feb/15/closing-of-postal-centers-could-cause-havoc-with/#ixzz1mYKoSl00
- vcstar.com 

Write Congress!

In our chapter on Congress, we note that staffers spend a good deal of time responding to constituent mail. Our chapter on interest groups shows that one major advocacy tactic consists of generating such mail. In this light, see a new report from the Congressional Management Foundation exploring how email and the Internet are affecting office procedures in Congress. (Full text is available here and here). Key findings:

1. Mail volume in congressional offices continues to increase exponentially. Senate offices reported a 548 percent increase in mail volume since 2002 (including one office that reported a 1,422 percent increase from 2002 to 2009); House offices reported a 158 percent increase. All offices reported a significant spike in volume in 2009 when Congress considered many high-profile issues.
2. Congressional offices are using email to reply to constituent email. An increasing number of congressional offices are answering incoming email with an email in response, rising from 37 percent in 2005 to 86 percent in 2010.
3. Constituent communications are consuming more time from congressional offices. A majority of staff report they spend more time on constituent communications than two years ago (58 percent); and 46 percent report shifting resources to manage increased volume.
4. Constituent mail is taking a significant amount of time to respond to whether or not there is a prepared text available. A sizable percentage of staff (42 percent) report it requires more than three weeks for the office to draft and approve a response to a constituent raising an issue that previously has not be raised, and 41 percent report it requires more than a week to respond to a constituent email even if a prepared text response has been drafted and approved.
5. When it comes to answering constituent mail, the biggest problem still remains controversial between staff and managers. While senior managers and staff primarily responsible for answering the mail agree on the top three challenges to quickly responding to constituent communications, they do not agree on the most significant problem. Senior managers state that the mail volume is the biggest challenge (35 percent); but, "mail staffers" report that "the review and approval process" is the biggest obstacle (41 percent).

Postal Politics

Our chapter on bureaucracy and the administrative state discusses government corporations, which supply goods and services when the free market appears to fall short. The most prominent is the US Postal Service. But as The New York Times reports, it is falling on hard times:

The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.

“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.

The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.

As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.

At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.

NBC follows up:

Today, AP reports:

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe warned that the Postal Service is on "the brink of default" as he battles to keep his agency solvent. Without legislation by Sept. 30, the agency "will default on a mandated $5.5 billion payment to the Treasury," Donahoe told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

And with no congressional action, a year from now, next August or September, the post office could run out of money to pay salaries and contractors, hampering its ability to operate, Donahoe said.

"We do not want taxpayer money," Donahoe said, "We have got to get our finances in order."

Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said: "We must act quickly. The U.S. Postal Service is not an 18th century relic, it is a 21st century national asset, but times are changing rapidly now and so, too, must the post office."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, noted that the post office supports a $1.1 trillion mailing industry employing more than 8 million people in direct mail, periodicals, catalogs, financial services and other businesses.