Congress Grapples with Postal Service Solvency

Last October the House Oversight Committee passed HR 2309, a bill that creates a control authority, a kind of receivership, to take over the Postal Service in the event it defaults on its financial obligations. Legislation has now been introduced in the Senate, S. 1789, with a somewhat different approach. S.1789 passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees in November and will provide a frame for reform legislation considered by the full Senate.  

The Senate bill has a greater focus on cost reductions in order to get the USPS to solvency. Although both bills create processes to close post offices considered unnecessary, the House bill does so through a commission to oversee the closing while the Senate bill creates a more public process.

The Senate bill also reforms the federal workers compensation system to require that employees who are on workers comp but who are also eligible for retirement must take retirement. This is not now a requirement. There literally are USPS employees in their 90's on workers' comp. The USPS represents about 40% of the workers' comp program of the entire federal government. The National Association of Letter Carriers, NALC, has declared its opposition to the Senate bill saying it "would cause irreparable harm to our nation's Postal Service." The NALC has long maintained that the main problem for the USPS is the unique legal requirement to pre-fund future retiree health benefits.