"Association for Postal Commerce"
The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito for Direct magazine (http://www.directmag.com). The views are the author's and do not necessarily reflect official policy of the association.
Watching the give and take among proponents and opponents for postal legislative reform has been a fascinating side-show of the postal reform debate. Proponents, which is where I number myself, have struggled to make the case that without a substantive redirection of the incentives that underlie the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS eagle (and all that it stands for) is destined to go the way of the gooney bird.
After all, this isn't rocket science. Enterprises that work on a break-even, cost basis have no incentive whatever to minimize costs to maximize gains, since gains aren't permitted. To make matters worse, try to find another $63 billion enterprise that is prohibited by law from paying its chief executive (or any of its other senior executives, for that matter) no more than $154,000 a year. Is there any surprise, then, to discover that this enterprise (Postal Service) suffers institutionally an absence of commonsense, business incentives.
For anyone who's ever struggled to meet a payroll, you would imagine that illustrating such a lack of appropriate incentives would make a very convincing argument for change. When it comes to making such arguments within the federal legislative arena, however, you'd better think again.
Instead, our legislators seem more enamored with the baloney being peddled by those who oppose postal legislative reform without questioning for a moment the motives of these nay-sayers. They don't even bother asking why the likes of the United Parcel Service or the Newspaper Association of America or their political patsies dressed in the guise of a "Main Street" coalition are so vehemently opposed to a measure such as H.R. 22.
There also don't seem to be too many Members of Congress who are concerned with ensuring that our nation maintains an intact, universal, postal delivery infrastructure. Nor do they think at all about how such an infrastructure needs to be financed, or how the disruption of a postal infrastructure would harm the American economy.
No, like Scarlet O'Hara, they'd rather hold off thinking of such things to another day. After all, ignorance really is bliss--even if the cost of such ignorance is a postal infrastructure that's "gone with the wind."
It's no secret that the Democrats in this Congress have worked hard to stick the 106th with the "do nothing Congress" sobriquet. That's a game Republicans and Democrats have played in the past. But when it comes to something as important as the preservation of a key element of our nation's economic infrastructure, I fail to understand why Members of Congress aren't working a bit harder to avoid being called the "know-nothing" Congress.
It's not only a pity; it should be enough to make you weep.