Unposted

​I came across a story a couple days ago that was actually very big news.  What’s weird is that the story took place back in April, and I was just finding out about it now.  In fairness, that may be largely about me – except I’ve spoken to several people about it, and they weren’t aware of it either. Only one friend was, so clearly it did make the news.  Interestingly, the reason he was aware of it, he said, is because he remembered me making a big deal about the problem in article here two years ago.

Back in April, 2020, I’d written a piece called “Going Postal.”  I wrote –

You've probably seen a great deal of talk recently about the U.S. Postal Service money trouble and maybe going bankrupt in a few months.  It's important to clarify the situation and understand that, as a pure business, the Postal Service is not operating at a loss, but rather than it's a political manipulation. For many years, Republicans in Congress have wanted to close the Postal Service down and privatize it -- for some bizarre reason known only to them.  As a result, they wrote into a bill that the U.S. Postal Service has to fully pre-fund a retirement pension plan for all 600,000 employees for the next 75 years in advance.  That's why they have this debt issue.  It's not because the public doesn't use the U.S. mail, and that's poorly run and a government boondoggle waste. All it takes to get the Postal Service out of its “debt” problem is for a new Democratic Congress to get elected and change the law so that the Postal Service doesn’t have to pre-fund the pension for all its 600,000 employees over the next three-quarters of a century.So, the next time some conservative tells you how badly run the Postal Service is and that's the cause of all its problems and why it should go out of business -- now you know the response.

​That was then, this is now.

The story at and is that Congress has passed, and President Biden has signed, the Postal Service Reform Act.  Among the various things it does is that, at the top of the list, it eliminates the mandate that required the Postal Service to cover its health care costs for members all those many years in advance.  In addition, the Act requires postal employees to enroll in Medicare when they are eligible, which will finally shift the burden of paying for heathcare benefits away from the Postal Service.

One estimate by the House Oversight Committee is that those two items alone will save USPS around $50 billion over the next decade.  Never mind the 76 years in advance, perpetually.

This is huge.  That health care requirement was one of the main reasons the Postal Service has operated in the red for many years.  (Another, for all the Republicans who’ve long insisted the USPS was poorly run – never mind that 76 years in advance deal the GOP created – is that unlike companies like FedEx and UPS who can drop a delivery line that is unproductive and losing money, the Postal Service cannot.  But hey, why quibble about the reality.)

There are two things that I find weird about this.  Both in a good way, to a degree.

The first is that I didn’t hear about it, even though it was signed into law four months ago.  I understand that there has been a huge amount of major news these days.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the House Select Committee investigation of January 6, primaries, the pandemic and more.  And it did get covered, I and many others just missed it.  But – it was really easy to miss because it didn’t get the significant coverage I think it deserved.  And this is significant.  But it’s certainly great that it became law, whether I missed it or not.

And the second is that I cannot begin to understand how it passed.  That means it got a majority of votes in the House – and at least 10 Republican votes in the Senate to get to 60.  That’s remarkable enough.  But more remarkable is that it’s for a bill, the heart of which, that undoes what was a Republican measure to undermine the Postal Service.  But the thing is, it not only “passed” – it passed the House by a massive vote of 342-92 and passed the Senate overwhelmingly by 79-19!  For a bill that gets rid of a requirement that Republicans themselves created to hurt the Postal Service.  I don’t understand it, it’s weird, but it’s real.  And it passed.

(It's also worth noting that although this was clearly a deeply bipartisan bill (and all appreciation to those on both sides of the aisle who voted for it), presidents get credit for such things -- whether because they helped create the environment where such bipartisanship could exits, or just because that's the way of the world, when something passes during your administration, it's yours.  After all, when such things fail, the president gets the blame.  So, chalk up another big win for Joe Biden.)

Wonderful.

And again, it also shifted Postal Service participation into Medicare and also includes other features, like permanently guaranteeing six-day delivery, along with other issues streamlining operation and transparency. 

Wonderful.

Now, next on the agenda they have to figure out how to get rid of Louis DeJoy…