Dripping Life April 30

My dad, a government agent, worked in the federal building called “The Post Office” in San Angelo. He worked on the third floor, which meant we had to walk past a wall of individual mailboxes on the way to his office. In my earlier days, I called it “The Po Office.” (PS: It took me a long time to connect the big building downtown with the man in blue trousers, carrying the big brown leather mail bag, going house to house in our post-World War II neighborhoods.)

In good weather, in my early childhood, I would wait on the top step of our porch every day for our mailman so that I could take delivery of our mail and then rush it indoors to my mom. Otherwise, the mail, a mix of bills and personal letters, written by family and friends from around the country, was left in the mailbox next to our front door.

Because the costs of long-distance phone calls were expensive -- I remember something like $2.50 a minute – long distance was reserved for really good news (we’re expecting!) or really bad news (Uncle Henry had a heart attack). Letters by contrast cost next to nothing, just the time to write down your thoughts, the stationary, and a three-cent stamp.

This low cost prompted our fourth-grade teachers to connect us with pen pals all across the U.S. In sixth-grade, we went international. In our geography class, we were each tasked with requesting pamphlets and other information from the consulates of a foreign countries.

All of this personal history with the post office has me concerned about the current state of the postal service.

There’s currently talk in Congress about abolishing the United States Postal Service because it has been losing money, ever since it was last funded by the federal government in 1971 (Forbes Magazine, Aug. 12, 2013 - “The Post Office is Broke” by Doug Bandow).

Also President Donald Trump said on Friday that he won’t approve a $10 billion loan for the U.S. Postal Service unless the agency raises charges for Amazon and other big shippers to four or five times its current rates (AP News, April 25). The $10 billon loan was included in the government’s $2 trillion economic rescue plan.

Congress founded the USPS in 1792. At the time, the local postmaster was one of the president’s most important appointments. So much so, that Benjamin Franklin was the first U.S. Postmaster General. (An interesting historical tidbit on Franklin’s genius. Franklin once theorized that at some future date, the mail would be delivered by rockets or some other aerial means. How’s that for a crystal ball?)

In my lifetime, the USPS has played a vital role—from delivering birthday cards from relatives for my birthday, sweet and romantic letters from a boyfriend at Virginia Military Institute, carrying my letters to a pen pal in Vietnam (which I inherited when my best friend Penny got married), letters of acceptance from colleges, wedding announcements, birth announcements, more birthday cards and on, and on, and on.

My point is simply this: After all the life events I have shared with the Post Office, I strongly feel that Congress shouldn’t kick the Post Office to the curb like some well-used-but-obsolete Texas Instruments calculator.

So, what’s next for USPS?

USPS now faces substantial financial challenges and threats to its survival, including unfavorable economic conditions, an evolving business environment, and declining mail volumes and revenue. And to add to the agency’s woes, Congress has failed repeatedly to act on postal reform, and most Presidents have had higher priorities than to focus on the agency, or to intercede on its behalf before Congress. (USPS is an independent agency of the executive branch, which means it falls under the President.)

President Trump said the USPS should start charging more for handling packages. Of course, this would make every online purchase cost more in some way…and from my years as a taxpayer, I’ve learned whatever changes happen within the government, whether it’s bailouts, tax reductions, declarations of war, any cost increases have to be paid -- by someone, and that someone is usually us. (The second rule of economics is that there’s no free lunch, and the fourth rule is that everything has unintended consequences.) So while I currently do not have a preferred solution, I do think the matter should be studied seriously. The USPS is worthy of the President’s and Congresses’ time. What I don’t think is an option, is a country without a sovereign postal service infrastructure. 

I will end with this. For an elderly friend, her daily porch visit with her postal carrier is often the only human contact she has. No matter what the weather, we can always count on the mail being delivered. Remember the old Sears Catalogs? It must have taken great strength and endurance for the postal carriers to deliver them…and what holiday season was complete without the Sears Catalog? Today we no longer have Sears Catalogs of course, but the principal of a trusted delivery mechanism remains in place.

Postal carriers -- not to mention the sorters and all the other behind-the-scenes workers at the post office -- are some of the hardest working people in our labor force. During this time of scary viruses, they physically handle our packages and letter. Now they need our support. No, not a single postal worker has asked me for it, but I ask this of you -- if you see our postal employees at the community mailboxes, it might be a nice gesture to thank them for all they do…and remember, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”  I know of no other U.S. agency that can boast the same. Do you?