The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote today on a $18.5 billion appropriations bill that recommends the payment of just $76.6 million to the USPS.
That amount, which is some $30 million less than the USPS received last year, is also significantly less than the $519.4 billion it received in special aid in 2001 from Congress to deal with the aftereffects of Sept. 11 and the anthrax scare.
The vote, expected to come late in the day, will be on HR-5120, the Treasury, Postal and General Government bill introduced on Monday by Rep. Ernest Mistook (R-OK) on behalf of the committee, chaired by Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-FL).
The Appropriations Committee, for the second year in a row, rejected the U.S. Postal Service’s request to have the government pay off its debt of more than $900 million. The USPS is predicting it will post its third consecutive deficit, $1.5 billion, when its fiscal year ends in September. Last year the USPS lost $1.6 billion; it lost $199 million the year before that.
Last March Postmaster General/CEO John Potter appeared before the committee’s postal subcommittee, repeating the request made a year earlier by his predecessor, William Henderson, for the money.
The debt is the result of the Revenue Forgone Reform Act of 1993, in which the Congress agreed to pay the USPS $29 million over 42 years to make up a $1.2 billion shortfall in annual payments to the USPS for processing free and reduced-rate mail.
In a report accompanying the bill, the committee, noting the USPS is fast approaching its statutory $15 billion debt limit, expressed deep concern over the postal service’s growing deficits, saying the postal service “must undergo fundamental changes to adapt to the current business climate.”
The report also criticized the postal service’s controversial pay-for-performance program, which last year paid out more than $161 million in bonuses to postal executives. According to the report the program “does not provide the necessary incentives to improve postal performance.” The report also instructs postal officials to re-examine that program and report its decision to the panel by Dec. 31.
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