IT'S TIME TO ATTEND TO THE NATION'S POSTAL BUSINESS

The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito. The views expressed are solely the author's, and PostCom recognizes an obligation to accept and share opposing, responsibly expressed points of view.

Okay, the suspense of the past months is over. The election's done, and we all know that George W. Bush will be in the White House for the next four years, and he'll have a Republican Congress right there along with him. So, it's time we within the mailing industry sent the White House and Congress a clear, definitive message: "It's time to get real about avoiding an unnecessarily high postal rate increase that can and will do substantive harm to a key sector of the American economy."

That message has sub-themes to it.

• Neither the present House nor Senate bill is viewed by any of the affected constituencies as the kind of postal framework the nation really needs to ensure a cost-efficient and effective postal infrastructure. Senators, Congressmen: "Your babies are ugly." Consequently, the House and Senate reform bills will have to be significantly overhauled, if comprehensive postal reform is to remain a possibility.
  
  
• No one, and I mean no one, who will have to live with a postal system as a key component of his or her business believes even for a second that there is any justification for maintaining the escrow that P.L. 108-18 has made necessary. Nor does anyone believe for a second that the Administration has presented a sound policy rationale for stiffing the Postal Service with the military portion of its employees' retirement obligations.

It's time we recognize that the CSRS escrow serves no legitimate public policy purpose whatever. It was and is a legislative fiction created solely because of some congressional unhappiness with or distrust of the Postal Service and its willingness to steward the retirement-related savings judiciously. The "point" that the sponsors of the escrow intended to make has produced a potentially horrendous and unintended outcome.

To make matters worse, the people who should have known better, the Members of Congress themselves, chose to use this legislative figment as a means of holding the mailing industry hostage as an otherwise unwilling "supporter" of legislative reform bills that were fashioned in camera and out of old cloth. Indeed, it was made clear throughout the year that no one on the Hill relished or valued contrarian views on the substance and thrust of the bills already well under development.

The quarterback rush didn't work. Now its time for a new game plan. The idea of foisting a "reform" package onto an agency that privately has been quite explicit in its disapproval of the measures and its lack of support was crazy anyway. If reform is to occur, then it's time to recognize that the some of the views of those who must administer this agency may have some legitimacy and be worthy of more significant consideration.

As far as the Administration is concerned,the election is over. It's time to end the baloney that the "cost to the budget" doesn't justify any change in current postal law. With the pork that was doled out in the waning days before the election, arguing that the escrow should be retained out of budgetary considerations is an insupportable joke. The mailing community should tell Treasury that, if it wishes, it can go ahead and hold its breath until it turns blue. All it will do by remaining so knot-headed on the CSRS and military issues is endanger the growth of a vital economic sector. It's time the President brought a stop to this sort of pre-electoral position-taking, and got on with rectifying the CSRS-military mess as his own Commission on the Postal Service had recommended.

In his message sent to an important constituency of his own, the biblical letter-writer Paul reminded his compadres that only children behave should behave like children, and that adults should behave as adults. It's time the mailing community put away its childish ways and get on with the business of setting right the postal ship of state. History has shown that when businesses, the Postal Service, and its employees are willing to fashion themselves into an irresistable legislative force, there is no such thing as an immoveable legislative object. Let's get on with it.