The "why" is simple.
Some six years ago, Rep. John M. McHugh (R-NY) took seriously the
concerns we at the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom), then
called the Advertising Mail Marketing Association, expressed regarding
the viability of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) in a hotly competitive,
electronic age. After two years of careful study, McHugh, as chairman of
the Subcommittee on the Postal Service for the House Committee on
Government Reform, proposed a far-reaching bill to "modernize" the
legislative and regulatory underpinnings of the Postal Service. His
proposal was subjected to considerable scrutiny by postal users and
competitors, and, in subsequent congresses, he reshaped his proposal to
reflect some of the disparate views that had been expressed by
supporters and critics alike.
Despite Mr. McHugh's efforts to address appropriately the legitimate
concerns of those most affected by his bill, competitors of the Postal
Service and their lackeys have remained strident opponents of
anything that promises to make the Postal Service a more
efficient competitor within the hard-copy message and package delivery
business. Meanwhile, "supporters" of his bill (and I say the word
"supporters" with tongue in cheek) have been most lackluster in their
efforts to convince members of Congress and, in the case of some trade
associations, members of their own to support congressional passage of
Mr. McHugh's bill.
So, here we are, some six years and three Congresses later, and the
matter of postal legislative reform is still languishing at the House
committee level. In the meantime, absolutely nothing has been
done on the matter of postal reform within the U.S. Senate.
Under rules adopted by the Republican House leadership in 1995, the
maximum number of years any one person can serve as chairman of a
particular committee or subcommittee is six. This year is Mr. McHugh's
last year as the chairman of the House postal subcommittee. If
re-elected in the fall, McHugh will be on to other business, and the
subcommittee's leadership (if there is a postal subcommittee at all)
will pass to other less-interested and less-informed hands. In fact, it
really doesn't matter whether the next Congress falls under Republican
or Democratic leadership. The simple fact is that John McHugh is the
only member of Congress who has taken on postal reform as a key
legislative issue. Indeed, he has been the most inquisitive and
knowledgeable congressional postal leader in recent memory.
McHugh's loss to the legislative effort to secure some significant
legislative postal change will hurt everyone whose business is
somehow connected to the viability of a universal mail delivery system.
For, without postal reform, the Postal Service will be on the fast-track
to fiscal perdition. In fact, it already is.
For the first time in its institutional life, the USPS is facing the
loss of mail volume and revenue. The prospects of even greater loss are
increasing as businesses move more of their commercial transactions to
electronic pathways. While some within our industry might choose to take
comfort in their own development of electronic alternatives, the plain
and simple fact is that the broadening of bandwidth and the development
of simple-to-use internet appliances notwithstanding, America will
continue to need for some time to come a method of delivering printed
messages and packages to any and every address in the nation.
When it comes to universal service, the Postal Service is
still the only game in town. The rents charged by the
likes of United Parcel Service (UPS) for simple rural, residential
delivery are enough to break any direct marketer's bank. Despite postal
competitors' claims that the USPS is guilty of "unfair" competition, no
one other than the Postal Service is willing to take on the nation's
universal mail delivery needs. In short, every direct marketer in the
nation desperately needs a Postal Service that can operate
cost-efficiently within today's competitive business environment.
Over the past six years, I've participated in a number of meetings
with "interested parties" on the topic of postal legislative reform. The
one thing that has impressed me has been the persistent bone-headedness
some have demonstrated when it comes to defining what they need
from postal legislative reform. They'll spend a great deal of time
talking about what they want (which characteristically is
unobtainable) and very little about what they need. They'll weep,
gnash their teeth, and rend their garments about the "imperfections"
they perceive in this proposal or that. Indeed, they seem more eager to
embrace the disastrous (i.e., what we have today) rather than the
acceptable, simply because they perceive a lack of the "perfect."
To make matters worse, many of the people within the direct mail
industry suffer from, for lack of a better term, postal attention
deficit disorder. The crisis or calm that's immediately before them
is all they can remember. In good postal times, the prospects of postal
legislative reform is nothing but an afterthought. In the midst of a
troubling rate case, the focus shifts to the microeconomic minutia that
characterizes modern American postal ratemaking without even a thought
that the trouble that now seems so foreboding at the forefront is the
offspring of previous years' neglect.
It's time our industry took seriously this wake-up call. The time for
picking legislative nits has long passed. It's time we stood ready to
support a proposal that at least promises mailers the possibility
of a better postal day. To stick with what we have only invites the
chaos a postal disintegration will visit on all our businesses. Remember
the anguished outcries that accompanied the United Parcel Service 10-day
strike? Just imagine, then, the anguish that will accompany a postal
fiscal collapse.
As far as postal employees are concerned, how long will it take to
learn that the newest postal oxymoron is "union leadership?" In fact,
when it comes to postal legislative reform, postal employee organization
leadership is most noteworthy by its absence rather than its
involvement. Could it be that union and employee group leaders are
really oblivious to portents of postal fiscal demise? Do they really not
understand that if they keep squeezing the goose they've relied on to
produce their golden eggs they just might squeeze the very life out of
it? Are they not aware that bargaining and arbitrating for the sake of
the postal unborn rather than for the long-term betterment of
their present members is not in their dues-paying members' best
interests?
Where also is the leadership that the nation should expect to see
from others who hold high posts within our nation's postal system? Where
are the Governors when it comes to legislative reform? Do they
appreciate fully the challenges that face the Postal Service in the
years ahead? Do they understand that a presidential appointment to the
Postal Service's governing board requires more than merely saying "yea"
or "nay" to a Postal Rate Commission recommended decision? Indeed, the
silence emanating from the postal board room on the matter of
postal legislative reform has been most disconcerting.
Unless we all take seriously this matter of positioning the Postal
Service to survive within the years ahead, we're all going to be in one
whale of a fix when an infrastructure that should work begins to
sputter and stall. As for John McHugh, well, he's done his part. I can
even hear the echo of his final words as he ambles out of the postal
subcommittee office for the last time as its chairman: "Apres moi le
deluge."
