By Frontiers of Freedom Institute President George Landrith 
After many years of difficulties, the appointment of outside businessman Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General brought hope that much needed change would be coming to the United States Postal Service (USPS).
The 2021 Delivering for America plan he put forward promised to put the Postal Service on a viable financial footing and to help it fulfill its intended mission: delivering mail, and packages together to every home and business in America six days per week, rain or shine, sleet or snow, and if necessary, “in the gloom of night.” This universal delivery function is a governmental service not performed now by any private company (and won’t be in the future).
That’s what Americans want – the ability to send and receive mail and packages throughout the country, direct to another address affordably, and efficiently. That is the Postal Service’s core capability and uniquely defined mission.
I still send letters; and I receive lots of packages from online shopping. Some of my relatives receive medication via the Postal Service. And millions of small businesses – including the 351,000 in Oklahoma, which account for more than 99% of all businesses in the state – depend on the Postal Service to ship their products. For centuries the Postal Service has helped to bind the nation together with equal treatment for Americans living and working in rural areas.
But at this point in time, there is much to be disappointed about with the Postal Service.
To start, the Postal Service just announced a $9.5 billion loss in fiscal year 2024! That’s up significantly from the already huge $6.5 billion loss in FY 23. And it comes despite Postal Service promises to have balanced its budget by now.
These financial woes are not due to a revenue problem – postage rates are up over 30% since June of 2018and package rates are on par with private sector competitors. It’s also not a problem of high service expectations. Indeed, the Postal Service has reduced its minimum acceptable service levels in recent years – but still hasn’t met any of them. Mailers are paying more for less.
The problem is costs – specifically the Postal Service’s failure to control them. It’s leadership has converted 190,000 flexible part time employees to permanent career unionized status at much higher compensation. It has also insourced transportation, forcing mailers and shippers to hand over their mail and packages further “upstream” in the delivery network and displacing more efficient private companies who historically have transported these items closer to their destination for “final mile delivery.”
Most concerning of all, the Postal Service also has embarked on a multi-billion-dollar spending spree to build a gold-plated nationwide network of midstream processing plants and logistics capabilities largely duplicative of those that already exist in the private sector. For example, there is a big, new facility planned for Oklahoma City and an upgraded facility in Glenpool. Not only will this add to the Agency’s financial woes, but for every Oklahoman – save those in the metro Oklahoma City area – these facilities will counterintuitively mean longer delivery times for mail and packages.
The Postal Service appears to be trying to do everything while losing sight of the one thing it must do – deliver mail and packages together to all Americans six days a week. It has started disadvantaging rural communities through higher prices and slower service, already announcing that it would only go to rural post offices once a day instead of twice to pick up mail. Then this month the on-time ‘performance target’ for mail was reduced yet again from 95% to 80%. In a state like Oklahoma, where more than a third of residents live in rural areas, this is of particular concern.
Do we really want USPS contributing to the “two Americas” that our country is currently grappling with? By almost every metric, rural communities continue to fall behind their urban and suburban counterparts. Losing reliable mail and package delivery services will only further contribute to this crisis.
Our founders saw the postal service as an important economic tool to America’s growth and a way to unite and bind the nation together as one. But if we allow the USPS to become a government agency that disunites America and promotes a “two America” view, it will fail to do what it was intended to do and have a negative impact on America’s future.
Congressional concern about the Delivering for America plan has been growing. Just this week the Senate committee responsible for oversight of the Postal Service – of which Senator James Lankford is a member – held a hearing with the Postmaster General to discuss these proposed service changes. The House of Representatives has one scheduled for December as well. The Postal Regulatory Commission, which oversees the Postal Service, also has raised numerous questions and is currently independently reviewing the merits of the plan. Hopefully this will all result in a thorough and rigorous examination of these concerns and provide the answers that Oklahomans and Americans deserve.
George Landrith is the President of Frontiers of Freedom a public policy think tank
