Government affairs

A bipartisan majority of the Senate has cosponsored Senate Resolution 99 (S. Res. 99), calling on Congress to take all appropriate measures to ensure that the Postal Service remain an independent agency of the federal government and not be subject to privatization, in whole or in part. The resolution now has 51 cosponsors plus the bill’s author, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), to go along with the 251 cosponsors for the related House resolution (H. Res. 33).

This is now the second time a bipartisan majority of support in all of Congress was reached for keeping the U.S. Postal Service an independent establishment of the federal government. Since the resolution was first introduced last year, the 115th and 116th Congresses have come out in opposition to the privatization of USPS, sending a clear message to the President and his administration.

In December 2018, the White House Postal Task Force released its recommendations on how to improve the agency. The report stopped short of directly calling for postal privatization but did make the point to highlight privatized systems in Germany and New Zealand.

Now that both chambers have a majority of support against privatization, any such proposal would be dead-on-arrival in Congress.

NALC encourages letter carriers to thank their Senators who cosponsored the resolution and if there are some that have yet to do so, please ask them for their support. Even after reaching a majority of support, it is important for us to get those cosponsor numbers as high as we can!