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March 24, 2013

Congress Has a Constitutional Duty to Preserve and Promote the Post Office

By John Nichols

The only question is whether members of Congress will side with the public interest in maintaining a strong and innovative postal service, or with the campaign donors and lobbyists who want to carve up the USPS and replace service with profiteering.

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Source: The Nation

A local post office in Markham, Virginia. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

No members of Congress who take seriously their oath sworn to uphold the Constitution can neglect the duty to preserve the United States Postal Service.

The founding document is clear. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 gives Congress the power and the responsibility: "To establish Post Offices and post Roads."

To say that Congress has shirked its duty in recent years would be an understatement of colossal proportions. The Republican-controlled House and Senate, working with former President George W. Bush, manufactured a crisis for the postal service in 2006 when they required the USPS to prefund its future healthcare benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years. That's something no major corporation could or would do, as it required the service to divert more than $5 billion annually to prepay the health benefits of retirees who have not yet been hired.

The absurdity of the circumstance created by those requirements, as well as the absurdity of the restrictions that remain on the ability of the USPS to compete, must be addressed by Congress.

Congress has backed a continuing resolution that pushes back against the current push to end Saturday delivery, potentially staving off what the National Association of Letter Carriers describes as "a disastrous idea that would have a profoundly negative effect on the Postal Service and on millions of customers."

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But this "fix" is only temporary. And there are more threats on the horizon. Proposals have been floated to close thousands of post offices, especially in rural areas. Postal sorting centers are being closed. Plans have been advanced to slash the workforce and to dramatically downsize the USPS.

While the scheming to impose an austerity agenda on the postal service has, at some points, been interrupted by Congress, a steady assault on the service continues -- urged on by private carriers that hope to see the service decline so that they can, through privatization, take over the most lucrative components of the USPS.

This is a classic austerity model: Politicians, influenced by corporations that fund campaigns and overrun Capitol Hill with lobbyists, undermine quality public services. Then they claim those services are not efficient and begin bartering them off to their cronies. It's pay-to-play politics at its worst, crony capitalism in the extreme. And it does not have to happen.

There are sound plans to stabilize the finances of the postal service and to allow it to compete. These reforms will not just ease the current crisis; they will put the service on solid footing to compete in the 21st century -- as postal services do around the world.

Responsible members of Congress, led by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, are fighting to save Saturday service permanently, and to free the postal service to compete. They'll be rallying Sunday with postal workers and community activists nationwide -- from the smallest crossroads town to New York City -- to demand immediate Congressional action.

Sanders and his Congressional allies are not just defending a necessary public service. They are upholding their oaths to the Constitution.

As the Postal Service is pick-pocketed by Congress, millions of Americans are languishing under medical debt. Read Allison Kilkenny's report on Strike Debt's pushback.

Authors Bio:

John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.

Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.

Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues. He was featured in Robert Greenwald's documentary, "Outfoxed," and in the documentaries Joan Sekler's "Unprecedented," Matt Kohn's "Call It Democracy" and Robert Pappas' "Orwell Rolls in his Grave." The keynote speaker at the 2004 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in Athens, Nichols has been a featured presenter at conventions, conferences and public forums on media issues sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Consumers International, the Future of Music Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Newspaper Guild [CWA] and dozens of other organizations.

Nichols is the author of the upcoming book The Genius of Impeachment (The New Press), as well as a critically-acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of 2000, Jews for Buchanan (The New Press) and a best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President (The New Press), which has recently been published in French and Arabic. He edited Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), of which historian Howard Zinn said: "At exactly the time when we need it most, John Nichols gives us a special gift--a collection of writings, speeches, poems, and songs from throughout American history--that reminds us that our revulsion to war and empire has a long and noble tradition in this country."

With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books, It's the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories) and Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.

Of Nichols, author Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the sharpest."

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