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Saturday Mail Delivery May Be Tapped for Roads and Bridges
• House leadership is proposing an unusual financial tradeoff in its struggle to find a way to fund the Highway Transportation Fund before Members of Congress go home in Congress to campaign: they want the Postal Service to pay for it!
• The HTF is nearing depletion, largely because the fuel tax designated to pay for it is not keeping up with the requirements of the fund to finance roads, bridges and infrastructure. More fuel-efficient cars have meant fewer tax dollars.
• Congress has been looking for a way to fund the HTF without raising a tax. Late last week, the notion of using postal dollar as a "pay-for" was struck. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-CA, who has been unable to find support to end Saturday mail delivery, wants to hook his issue onto another bill that Congress is required to pass. Although 220 members of Congress have already signed a resolution by Reps Sam Graves, R-MO, and Gerald Connolly, D-VA, to preserve 6-day mail, Issa believes the urgency for highway funds will overcome this resistance. Today the Postmaster General said he also supports this approach.
• There are many things wrong with using elimination of Saturday mail for the highway fund.
• One is that there is no real money in this transfer. The USPS purported delivery savings are all paper savings that will not actually deliver cash to the Department of Transportation. The real money for HTF will come by widening the deficit.
• Another is that using USPS money to pay for anything other than timely and affordable mail service opens up the Postal Service as a piggy bank for the next pet project of someone in Congress. For mailers who just had to swallow a 6.9% postage increase, the possibilities of endless siphoning of USPS money are daunting.
• Yet another is that USPS has reported it will save $2 billion a year with 5 day mail. That number is much outdated and does not reflect the USPS intention to deliver packages 6 days a week even if it refuses to deliver newspapers. But even if $2 billion were accurate, that amount would fund the highways for only 8 months. Be (Continued on page 4)
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