In case you missed it—because it got so little news attention—there’s a bit of good news regarding the United States Postal Service (USPS). In what was a very rare moment of bipartisan unity on a domestic issue, the U.S. Senate on March 8 passed the Postal Service Reform Act with a robust vote of 79 to 19. The House of Representatives passed the same bill in February with similarly high levels of support from both parties in a 342-92 vote. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law.
While such broad support would ordinarily be cause for skepticism about how progressive a bill could be if Republicans in particular backed it, it turns out that an improbable alignment of factors helped the cause of reforming the USPS. In fact, progressives would do well to seize this chance to build on the model of success and efficiency, which a trusted and well-loved government agency is offering Americans.