Postal Clause

The founding fathers created the postal clause because they realized how important it was for the country to stay informed. During wartime, it helped to have information and reports sent across far distances to coordinate war efforts. For elections, it helped political candidates remain in touch with the citizens. James Madison thought that allowing citizens to remain in touch with elected officials essentially created a check by the postal system on those officials. The postal clause would also allow the government to generate some money for the new country, thereby strengthening commerce, democracy, and its citizens.

The post office of today is in dire straits. There are many arguments for the privatization of the postal service, and other arguments for reforming the laws that govern it. In 2006, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was passed by Congress. It required the USPS to pre-fund 75 years' worth of future retirees' healthcare benefits in a ten year time period at an annual rate of $5.5 billion. Two years later, the recession hit during a time when the use of the postal service was declining due to the increase in consumers utilizing digital media for services such as bill payment and e-mail. In 2011, the USPS notified Congress that it would default on the annual payment for retirement benefits. They didn't have the money. When the USPS defaults on a payment, the benefit accounts still get paid into by the U.S. Treasury. In turn, taxpayers would have to pay that money back to the Treasury, which would be a bailout. This has caused a split in government on how to solve the problem. The USPS claims that it actually made a profit during the recession, but went into debt to make the annual benefits payments. They also claim to have overpaid retirement pensions by $50-75 billion. The USPS would like Congress to funnel this overpayment into the health benefit accounts. But, Congress has counted this overpayment as a surplus for the budget. Taking it out would be a deficit, increasing our debt. They are reluctant to give that money back.

Some ideas have been put into legislation to save the post office. The Postal Reform Act wants to close one-quarter of all the post offices in the country, decrease the number of employees, cut Saturday delivery of mail, stop subsidies for certain mail users, have postal employees pay into their benefits at the same rate as federal workers, and move mailboxes away from doors into "cluster boxes" like those at apartment buildings. Representative Issa, the writer of this bill, claims that this act will save the post office enough money to buy a whole new fleet of vehicles.

The problem is that the closing of post offices created a public out roar. Many people don't want to have to travel farther to the nearest office. They see the post office as a governmental and familial institution. In response, Rep. Connolly introduced the Reform the Postal Service