Keep US Posted Urges USPS Regulators to Deny Petition for Unlimited Rate Increases

Sourcehttps://www.keepusposted.org

Comments Submitted to the Postal Regulatory Commission Argue for Restoration of the CPI-Based Price Cap & Highlight Economic Impact on American Consumers & Businesses

(February 19 , 2026) — Washington, DC — Keep US Posted, a nonprofit advocacy group of consumers, nonprofits, newspapers, greeting card publishers, magazines, catalogs and small businesses united in the belief that a reliable, affordable U.S. Postal Service is essential to our way of life and should be protected, today submitted comments to the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) opposing the US. Postal Service’s recent petition asking for unlimited power to raise prices for Market Dominant mail, which includes all First-Class mail, marketing mail, newspapers and magazines. Instead, Keep US Posted urges the PRC to re-establish the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate cap, which was expanded in 2020.
 

“The evidence is unmistakable: postage rates are rising significantly faster than overall inflation, imposing significant affordability burdens on mail users,” wrote former Congressman Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), executive director of Keep US Posted in the organization’s comments. “The data strongly supports restoring the CPI-based rate cap to protect the public interest and stabilize the mail system.”

 Yoder’s comments continued, “As the Commission noted in its May 8, 2025 analysis of USPS’s 10-K, both Total Factor Productivity and Labor Productivity declined markedly in the period FY2021-FY2024 — the same time USPS was imposing large increases at an unprecedentedly frequent, twice-a-year cadence. This decline marks the worst productivity performance by USPS since measurement began in 1972 and highlights that USPS does not have a revenue problem — it has a cost control problem that it has proven to be incapable of addressing on its own … Restoring the CPI-based rate cap will impose the need for USPS to reduce its costs, imposing the cost discipline that shareholders bring to private companies.”

 Since the launch of former Postmaster General DeJoy’s 2021 Delivering for America plan, USPS has lost more than $25 billion — even with the passage of 2021 CARES Act, which provided $10 billion, and the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, which resolved a massive $120 billion in liabilities. Despite such overwhelming indications that the Delivering for America plan’s shift to favoring packages over mail is not working, USPS is still following the same path and taxing Market Dominant mail — which is its biggest revenue source — by excessively raising prices while reducing service, thereby driving even more mail out of the system.Keep US Posted supports H.R.3004 — federal legislation called the “USPS Services Enhancement and Regulatory Viability Expansion and Sustainability for the U.S. Act” (USPS SERVES US Act). An alternative to a taxpayer bailout of USPS, the bill will limit the negative effects of DeJoy’s Delivering for America plan, and restore reliability, consistent customer service and rate certainty by empowering the Postal Regulatory Commission to course-correct past USPS decisions that are hurting its ability to serve the American people and driving it into financial ruin.

Key reforms contained in the USPS SERVES US Act will:

·       Limit Rate Hikes: Restricts USPS to one rate increase per year and prohibits price caps without limits.

·       Improve Productivity: Reduces USPS rate authority if it fails to improve productivity. Also creates an autonomous Office of the Customer Advocate to hear Americans’ concerns and protect the public.

·       Restore Service Quality: Holds USPS accountable for improving efficiency and ties rate authority to service performance. In addition, the legislation makes the PRC’s service evaluations binding and requires the PRC to develop its own volume estimation model independent of USPS.

About Keep US PostedKeep US Posted is a nonprofit advocacy group of consumers, nonprofits, newspapers, greeting card publishers, magazines, catalogs and small businesses — all united in the belief that a reliable, affordable U.S. Postal Service is essential to our way of life and should be protected. Keep US Posted supports alternatives to current and future efforts to slow the mail and increase postage rates. To learn more, visit www.KeepUSPosted.org.

Sourcehttps://www.keepusposted.org

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