by Dick Hall-Sizemore
One of the best services provided by the federal government that began before the United States was an independent country is the postal service. Americans have depended on it and taken it for granted for centuries. Until recently.
In recent years, service has deteriorated markedly. For example, I put out bill payments in my mail box on Tuesday morning last week. They were not picked up until Thursday. Members of the Virginia delegation to Congress say that they receive more complaints about the Postal Service than any other subject.
There are many reasons for the decline in postal service. Last week, the U.S. Senate passed the Postal Service Reform Act (the House had acted on it earlier) designed to address some of the problems. Most importantly, it will end the requirement, imposed by Congress many years ago, that the Postal Service prefund its future retiree health care costs. That provision is expected to save the agency $27 billion over the next 10 years. The bill also ensures six-day mail delivery and requires the Postal Service to create an online dashboard with data to track national delivery times. Louis DeJoy, the controversial Postmaster General appointed during the Trump administration, called passage of the bill “vital.”
Both houses of Congress passed the bill with strong bipartisan margins, a rarity these days. The vote in the House of Representatives was 342-92. Two of those “nay” votes came from Virginia Republicans Ben Cline (6th District) and Bob Good (5th District).
Enough said.
