House Passes Postal Service Reform—Here’s What It Means For Your Mail

Topline

After years of revenue losses and widely criticized mail delays, the House passed a bill Tuesday to combat the U.S. Postal Service’s ailing financial condition and add accountability for the agency to deliver mail on time, approving the measure in a landslide 342-92 bipartisan vote even as USPS has become increasingly politicized under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

Cars drive past a mailbox on August 17, 2020 in Morristown, New Jersey.

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Key Facts

The Postal Service Reform Act would restructure the investment USPS makes in retired employee health plans and add Medicare requirements, which combined are projected to save USPS more than $50 billion over 10 years, according to lawmakers behind the bill.

This would help “preserve the ability of the Post Office to exist,” bill sponsor and House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) told Forbes.

DeJoy has also repeatedly pointed to its poor financial condition to justify making changes—including those in 2020 blamed for widespread mail delays.

This legislation would mandate USPS deliver mail six days a week, meaning it couldn’t cut service in the future.

It would also establish an online dashboard with weekly updates on the on-time delivery rate for everywhere in the U.S., increasing transparency so that people can easily see if mail is delayed in their area and by how much.

That could help lawmakers recognize issues in their districts and hold USPS accountable for improving service, said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) during a committee hearing Monday, noting that if mail delivery is “bad…this will allow us to be able to fix that.”

What To Watch For

The bill will now go to the Senate, where it also has “significant” bipartisan support with 14 GOP cosponsors, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said Tuesday. Peters, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee and introduced the Senate version of the bill, said in a statement he expects to “move quickly to vote” on the legislation.

Big Number

$4.9 billion. That’s how much money the USPS lost in 2021, the agency reported in November, though that’s down from a net loss of $9.2 billion in 2020. The agency’s financial issues are blamed on a variety of factors beyond how much mail is actually delivered—its present structure for retirement health benefits being chief among them.

Crucial Quote

“I think we saw through the Covid crisis how fundamentally important [the Postal Service] was to Americans,” Maloney told Forbes in an interview, describing the bill as “strongly and firmly bipartisan.”

Tangent

The USPS bill is moving forward four months after DeJoy’s 10-year business plan for the agency went into effect, which includes measures that slows the delivery of some mail and have been heavily criticized by Democrats. This bill actually includes language that supports DeJoy’s decision to stop transporting mail by airplane, which has made some mail delivery slower. Passing the bill in concert with DeJoy’s plan was necessary for Republicans to back it, Comer said during a House Rules Committee hearing Monday.

Surprising Fact

The bill also lets the USPS work with state and local governments to provide nonpostal services to Americans, which Maloney suggested could include things like obtaining hunting, fishing and drivers licenses. It would also help rural newspapers through reduced mailing fees.

Key Background

Congress has been trying for years to get rid of a regulation requiring USPS to pre-fund retiree health benefits, which it first established in 2006 but has been a major contributor to the agency’s years of financial issues. The legislation marks a rare recent point of bipartisan agreement regarding USPS, which has become increasingly politicized under DeJoy. A longtime GOP fundraiser and Trump ally, DeJoy has sparked Democrats’ ire since he took control of the agency in summer 2020 and imposed changes that slowed down mail ahead of the presidential election, when mail-in ballots became a huge issue. House Democrats have repeatedly held hearings to question DeJoy and passed legislation in 2020 that took direct aim at his actions, which died in the Senate.