The U.S. Postal Service is dysfunctional, timeworn, and hemorrhages billions of dollars a year. It’s also an essential operation that still knits communities together and helps major private carriers get their packages to doorsteps.
So it’s wonderful that a bipartisan coalition in the House of Representatives finally mustered the will Tuesday evening to pass a bill that gives the Postal Service a fighting chance. Politicians have warned that the post office was in danger of running out of money in two years without an overhaul.
The Postal Service Reform Act aims to do just that, by ending a budget oddity that had hamstrung the service for more than a decade. It also rationalizes how the post office handles its employees’ health benefits, mandates greater transparency and oversight around its bookkeeping, and opens the door to modernization and innovation. A companion bill is expected to get bipartisan backing in the Senate and the White House has signaled its support. Change is afoot.The Postal Service has been a political football over the last two years, buffeted by concerns that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, appointed by the Postal Service’s board during former President Donald Trump’s term, was undermining operations to give his benefactor an advantage in the 2020 presidential election. The post office’s financial and strategic challenges have also been repeatedly misdiagnosed, by Trump and others, leaving little hope that its problems could be solved.
