Press Releases

Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the “Options to Bring the Postal Service Back from Insolvency.” Among those testifying were Mr. Patrick Donahoe, Postmaster General and CEO, USPS and Mr. Frederic Rolando, President, The National Association of Letter Carriers. Rep. Cartwright’s statement is below:

“The Postal Service is one of the widest reaching aspects of our society, delivering to over 150 million and operating more than 32,000 post offices. It manages to serve on this scale while still being ranked as the best postal service in the G-20. This effectiveness is in no small part thanks to the fantastic postal employees who number well over 600,000. The workers and unions who represent the Postal Service are its backbone and are responsible for aiding in economic activity across the nation.

The agency’s crisis is a direct result of an unsustainable congressional mandate imposed on the Postal Service by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), this prefunding mandate needs to be repealed as soon as possible. The implementation of the PAEA required an immense prefunding of retiree health benefits. This translates to nearly $59 billion in payments over the next 10 years, an unreasonable cost to the Postal Service and an unprecedented requirement in both the public and private sectors. The economic downturn hit soon after this mandate kicked in, and the Postal Service has experienced the same sales woes that all businesses have faced.

In response, the USPS is now intending to cut one day of delivery as a cost-saving measure. This is a flawed plan, and one that would hurt the hundreds of millions of Americans that depend on the Postal Service, as well as hundreds of thousands of postal employees nationwide.

A reduction to five day mail would cost jobs and hours for our valuable Postal workers, and would permanently impair the USPS’s place in the market. As the Internet cuts into the business of the USPS with instantaneous correspondence, the appropriate response is not to slow down. There are more effective ways to reform the Postal Service that will not cost jobs, and I look forward to discussing this topic with my colleagues, but I urge repeal of the prefunding requirement this year as a necessary measure."