Still Time to Save the Post Office

My tiny rural town has one huge drawback and one huge advantage.

The drawback is that we are outside the service areas of the surrounding towns' cable systems and thus have no access to highspeed broadband internet.

The huge advantage is that we still have a post office. A post office that could easily erase that drawback, if only Congress would let it.

John Nichols at The Nation:

But even this progress is threatened as the postal debate heads to the less friendly House. Under pressure to act by May 15, when a moratorium on closures ends, the House could enact a worse measure. And much could be lost in the reconciliation process.

So this is the time to turn up the volume in defense of the PO, pressuring not just Democratic Congressional leaders but farm-state Republicans. Those Republicans need to feel the heat before their small-town constituents face the devastation caused by closures, which will further cut rural communities off from the rest of the country. There’s a large constituency for the USPS; more than 1 million Americans have signed “Save America’s Postal Service” petitions, and have held rallies across the country to resist cuts and closures. Americans “get” that the cuts are as unnecessary as they are unwise.

SNIP

The campaign message should not be one of mere defense, however. It must echo the call of Senator Patrick Leahy, who says, “The Postal Service needs a plan not only to survive but to thrive. To do that the Postal Service must listen to its customers, understand its market and play to its strengths.” Along with easing the prefunding burden, that plan should erase onerous regulations that have prevented the USPS from raising revenue.

But the USPS must do more than just compete with private delivery services. It should embrace the digital age by using post offices to help communities tap into broadband wireless communication. It should turn post offices into help centers offering a broad array of public services. And it should consider re-establishing the postal banking system the United States maintained until 1967, bringing basic financial services to underserved communities.

The USPS can continue to be what the founders intended when they established it in the Constitution: a vital public service that connects Americans and links America to the world. This is not a budget or regulatory question; it is a political one. Even Republicans are beginning to realize that the PO is popular; embracing and enhancing that popularity by making the future of the service a 2012 campaign issue would create the political will needed to prevent this treasure from being squandered in the name of austerity and privatization.