In his testimony before the House this week, Postmaster General Steiner listed seven anchors that threatened to sink the ship of the Postal Service. Here’s an except from the hearing transcript.
Anchor and No Life Jacket
I like to say that in the time since peak 2006 mail volume, the Postal Service was thrown overboard and instead of tossing us a life jacket, we were thrown an anchor.
So, what does that anchor look like, and why is it weighing us down?
First, there is our regulator. We are regulated like a monopoly, though we ceased to be one long ago. There are electronic or private competitor alternatives to every piece of volume in our system. In fact, we are regulated worse than a monopoly, because even a monopoly is allowed to make money. Think about that: our regulator ensures that we won’t make money or break even – out of fear of a non-existent mail monopoly. The regulator puts pricing restrictions on us, requires we give “work share” dollars back to our customers, and places a number of other unreasonable burdens on us that cost us billions of dollars every year. Moreover, they recently enacted an order that, among other things, limits us to one price
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