A Bill to Save the Post Office Needs Your Help

Congress created the fake crisis that is killing the Post Office, and now finally a member of Congress has proposed legislation to reverse that stupidity.  

 

Annie-Rose Strasser at Think Progress:

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has introduced legislation to try to save the US Postal Service from its incipient bankruptcy, and he is asking for the public to help him pass it. 

DeFazio’s bill would repeal the needless requirement — one no other business or entity must face — that the Postal Service pre-fund 75 years’ worth of employee health benefits. That requirement has hugely contributed to the USPS defaulting for the first and then second time in its history last year. Analysis from 2012 estimated that the USPS would have a $1.5 billion surplus without the benefit requirement.

But DeFazio recognizes that facts alone will not influence his colleagues to take up and pass the legislation, so he has also turned to the White House’s petition platform, We The People, to petition President Obama to take a stand against the health benefit requirement. He also points out many of the other flaws in how Congress has managed the postal service:

SNIP 

Some conservatives have made the argument that having a national postal service is frivolous in the age of private delivery companies and email, but that ignores the fact that rural Americans don’t enjoy those services with the same regularity that urban and suburban Amercians do. For the elderly and for rural Americans, closed post offices and slowed delivery mean less consistent communication. It can also mean more economic inequality.

Update

President of the National Association of Letter Carriers Fredric Rolando told ThinkProgress that he was happy with DeFazio’s efforts, which he called a fight “for meaningful comprehensive postal reform aimed at strengthening the Postal Service so it can continue to provide Americans with the world’s best and most efficient delivery service.”

 Go sign the petition right now, and send it to all your friends.