The House Government Reform Committee has scheduled a June 20 markup or vote on a bill to reform the financial ailing U.S. Postal Service, which has yet to be introduced.
Rep. John McHugh (R-NY), who has been fighting for postal reform since his election to the House in 1994, is expected to introduce the measure within the next several days.
Committee members have been reviewing a draft of the measure for weeks.
With less than 100 days remaining in the current legislation session there is doubt over whether the panel will send the measure to the full House for consideration or if it does, whether the full House will go along with it. And there is doubt over whether the Senate could or would act on the measure by the end of the year.
“It would take a minor miracle for the bill to reach the floor of the House and a major miracle for the Senate to act on it,” says Gene Del Polito, Association for Postal Commerce president. “I’d say its chance of passage in this legislative session is less than 20%.”
In its final form, the bill, which incorporates many of the items proposed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and other committee Democrats, the USPS would gain some flexibility in pricing its products and services. It would also cap certain rates, establish revenue targets tied to the Consumer Price Index and develop cost saving incentives for the postal service. The service expects to end the current fiscal year more than $1 billion in the red.
The measure, endorsed a week ago by the postal service’s Board of Governors, would also allow the USPS to establish the rates for those products and services that compete with private business. And would permit the USPS to offer new and experimental services on a limited basis without seeking the backing of the Postal Rate Commission (PRC) renamed the Postal Regulatory Commission.
At the same time it would give the renamed PRC additional authority over certain aspects of the postal service’s operators and create an 11 member national commission to study the USPS and its operations for up to 30 months before filing improvement recommendations with Congress and the President.
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