The Emperor Has No Clothes....And the Postal Service Has No Reform 

The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito. The views expressed are the author's. Comments about this piece can be directed to genedp@postcom.org.

Just about every kid over the age of five has heard the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes"--where the Emperor was buck naked. Everyone knew it, but only a child had the common sense and audacity to acknowledge it. 

Well, for the past several months, just about everybody in Washington has been lauding the Emperor's new postal reform clothes (H.R. 4341 and S. 2468). To a person, the adoring crowd shouted "marvelous!" "wonderful!", while muttering that just about the only suit in which the Emperor was attired was the one God gave him on the day he was born. 

Let's see...I'm over the age of five and I've heard the story before. So here goes: "THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES"--and he's not likely to get a postal reform suit of clothes before this legislative year ends. Postal reform is going down for the three-count, if it's not already dead in the water. A gander at the legislative calendar shows that time's running out, and since this year's House and Senate committee actions no substantive progress has been made in putting a reform measure on the President's desk. 

Congress, however, has not yet adjourned sine die, and some precious time remains to take stock of reality and move quickly to rectify an injustice that will exact an unnecessary cost from the bottom lines of thousands of companies, schools, churches, and charities across America. That cost, of course, will be a postal rate increase swollen unnecessarily by the imposition of an escrow on the savings derived from an overpayment mailers have made for years toward postal retirement pensions.  

Everybody who's been following the postal reform saga knows what this is about. Just think back to the enactment of P.L. 108-18. Remember the imposition of an unnecessary escrow of Civil Service Retirement System overpayments that should have been released to the Postal Service? Remember Treasury's fobbing off to postal rate payers the military portion of postal retiree pensions?

These two matters are of vital importance to mailers, since both will be reflected in the rates businesses and consumers will pay to communicate and transact business by mail. Both promise to add billions of dollars in unnecessary costs to thousands of businesses whose fortunes are tied to a universal mail delivery system. 

Whether we like it or not, postal reform has reached an impasse. Politics, in part having nothing with postal policy, has overtaken events and is choking the life out of any hope of enacting postal reform. 

In the meantime, mailers' hopes for CSRS relief are still being held hostage to an increasingly futile hope for the enactment of postal reform. I don't blame the Members of Congress who have poured hours into this issue to try to keep mailers hanging together in support of a legislative effort, but time's running out, and about the only thing certain is that without swift action mailers are going to hang. 

It should be obvious by now that the many unresolved issues that are a part of the postal reform debate will not be addressed to everyone's satisfaction before the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader make their call to the President to tell him that the 108th Congress has adjourned. There is still time, though, for persons of good will who have no interest in punishing businesses and consumers for the vagaries of the legislative process to release two more years worth of CSRS savings before the Postal Service files for its next postal rate increase.

Why two years? Because the Postal Service most likely will be using a 2006 fiscal year as the basis of its break-even calculations. A release of savings for fiscal 2005 and 2006 will ensure that rates aren't overblown by any escrow imposition. 

A release of two year's funds doesn't require anyone to compromise whatever principles he or she holds dear with regard to postal reform. Those principles can still serve as the foundation of some future discussion and debate. In the meantime, however, mailers wouldn't have to watch their bottom lines plummet because of some unnecessary and unjustifiable postal tax. 

My advice to all mailers is to start taking the names of anyone and everyone at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue who fails to do what is right and to hold them accountable in the only forum that means anything to them--the voting booth.