The Trump Administration on June 21, 2018 released its so-called Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations – formally entitled the Office of Management and Budget’s Report on Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century. The plan includes various Trump proposals for reorganizing the federal government. Buried deep in the Report is the President’s plan to restructure the Postal Service into a “sustainable business model” and thereby “prepare it for future conversion . . . into a privately held corporation.”
“The plan itself is unsustainable,” said NPMHU President Paul Hogrogian after reading through the 128-page report. “It starts by noting that public trust in the federal government has declined over the last decade, but then proposes to dismantle the most trusted component of that government – the Postal Service – and move it into the private sector.” “The inevitable result of such privatization,” said Hogrogian, “would be to destroy universal postal services for every American,” which has been a mainstay of the nation’s systems for communications and commerce ever since the Founding Fathers put the Post Office into the U.S. Constitution. If postal services were privatized, as the Trump Administration envisions, many Americans would lose their daily access to postal services, and the cost of those services for other Americans would increase greatly.
To be sure, the Postal Service currently faces a difficult financial situation, principally caused by the mandatory pre-funding of retiree benefits ordered by Congress in 2006. But there is legislation currently pending in Congress and proposed rules already issued by the Postal Regulatory Commission to address USPS finances. Taken together, these proposals provide a roadmap for sustaining the Postal Service as the cherished American institution that it always has been. Policymakers and others interested in how to ensure the future of the Postal Service should take the time needed to read the materials that all four major postal unions recently submitted to the White House Task Force on the USPS. That joint submission is linked here:
- Workforce Submission to the White House Task Force on the USPS (white paper)
- An Executive Summary of the Workforce Submission
- Policy Options for Eliminating or Reducing the Prefunding Burden (summary chart)
- History of Postal Reform Legislation
- Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century - Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations
