OUR NATION HAS the biggest and best postal system in the world. U.S. postal workers' productivity far outstrips other industrialized nations, including Japan.
Who benefits? The customers of the Postal Service, the American public, who enjoy the lowest postal rates in the world.So before Congress lends its ear to the proponents of postal privatization, it had better consider what is at stake.
The framers of the Constitution saw the provision of postal services as a uniquely federal function.
The USPS is what economists call a "natural monopoly," which simply means that the universal scope of the service delivered requires a sole provider. Those who would repeal the private express statutes would dismantle the Postal Service and turn the mails over to private enterprise.
The peddlers of privatization preach that America's postal system needs a healthy dose of competition. The privatizers fantasize about a system where dozens - perhaps hundreds - of private postal companies would vie with each other and the USPS to deliver your relative's birthday card from Miami to Seattle.
Can't you see it now - scores of individual postal outfits blossoming across the land, promising to handle the first-class letters of 250 million Americans at a unit price of 32 cents - and still hoping to turn a profit?
As a public service, the USPS was never intended to make a profit. The Postal Service was mandated by Congress to operate on a break-even basis, which it managed to do until recent years.
The USPS receives no subsidies from the U.S. government. As the postmaster general recently said, "We don't spend tax money to deliver the mail. Your stamp dollars keep those cards and letters coming."
However, Congress has viewed the Postal Service as a "cash cow" in the past decade, raiding the Postal Service to the tune of $14 billion to help stanch the hemorrhaging federal budget deficit.
Some in Congress are scheming now to steal another $11.6 billion from the USPS in the name of deficit reduction.
If the Contract With America entails putting out a contract on the USPS, forget it. Why? Let them ask their own constituents, particularly if they represent rural areas or inner-city neighborhoods.
For the average citizens in those locales, the post office is the key communications link to their relatives, credit card companies, mortgage companies and utilities.
Members of Congress who doubt this should consult with their colleagues who do represent such rural or urban populations. For starters, they could ask Rep. John McHugh, new chairman of the Postal Service Subcommittee of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. He represents a large rural district in upstate New York. He knows how important the Postal Service is to his constituents.
Most people - particularly in rural areas and inner cities - do not have personal computers. They can't go "surfing on the Internet."
In short, for the average citizen, the Postal Service is their "information highway." It may not be a "superhighway" in terms of speed of message transmission, but it is the affordable service most citizens rely on for their correspondence, both personal and business related.
The overwhelming majority of Americans are satisfied with their mail service. That undisputed fact has been borne out by every survey ever taken to measure postal customer satisfaction.
So let the pro-privatization people in Congress check with their constituents before they start messing around with the post office. To do otherwise could prove harmful to their political health in 1996!