Industry and consumer groups applaud House passage of critical postal reform

With bipartisan backing, as well as support from the U.S. Postal Service and labor unions, legislation represents rare consensus policy to keep USPS delivering reliably and affordably.

Keep US Posted, an alliance consisting of members of the American public and consumer interests as well as industry groups, newspapers, nonprofits and businesses, applauds the House of Representatives for passing the Postal Service Reform Act of 2021 (H.R. 3076) and calls on members of the Senate to support the legislation by moving swiftly to enact it.

The bipartisan Postal Service Reform Act—which would free the Postal Service from a 2006 law requiring the Postal Service set aside funds for retiree health benefits 75 years in advance, as well as codify an integrated six-day delivery schedule for the vast majority of U.S. addresses to keep the U.S. Postal Service delivering efficiently—passed the House Tuesday with a vote of 342 to 92.

“The House has seized the greatest opportunity for positive, bipartisan postal policy in more than a decade, and now it’s time for the Senate to do the same,” said Former Congressman Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), executive director of the Keep US Posted campaign. “As the U.S. Postal Service is proving now as it delivers COVID-19 testing kits throughout the nation, it remains the only network capable of reaching every address in the country six and seven days each week.”

Yoder continued, “The Postal Service Reform Act represents conservative yet fair fiscal policy by guaranteeing that the Postal Service will remain funded by postage, not taxpayer funding. The legislation frees the Postal Service from the 2006 requirement that it prefund retiree health care costs 75 years in advance without removing those benefits. In codifying an integrated mail-and-package delivery network, the legislation also means that the Postal Service will be able to take advantage of the critical economies of scale it needs to keep reaching every address in America, no matter how remote. The American public now looks to the U.S. Senate to take advantage of a nonpartisan effort to keep our Postal Service delivering.”