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The Postal Service’s 2018 Fiscal Year financial report shows the Postal Service’s underlying business strength while also indicating the need to address external matters beyond USPS control. Despite a solid 1.5 percent rise in revenue compared to last year, USPS reported an operating loss of $1.951 billion. 

This shows the need for policymakers to address two public policy issues – the stamp price rollback and the congressional mandate that USPS prefund future retiree health benefits decades into the future. 

In April 2016, the price of a stamp was rolled back by two cents, reducing postal revenue by $2 billion a year. That was the first rollback since 1919 and it makes little financial sense because USPS already has the industrial world’s lowest rates. Without this decrease, the $1.951 billion operating loss in FY2018 would be a small operating profit of $49 million – without a dime of taxpayer money.

Fortunately, the Postal Regulatory Commission is in the midst of a legally mandated review of the postage rate-setting system. At present, USPS is constricted in its ability to adjust rates by no more than the Consumer Price Index, but the CPI is an economy-wide measurement of consumer goods and services that doesn’t fit a transportation and delivery provider. The PRC has the ability to correct this mismatch and relieve the resulting financial pressure. 

Meanwhile, Congress should address the pre-funding burden it imposed in 2006, which requires USPS – alone among all public and private entities in the country – to prefund future retiree healthcare benefits at an annual cost of about $5.8 billion. It’s important to note that this goes on the books as red ink whether or not it’s actually paid in a given year. 

Fixing the external financial burdens posed by the price rollback and pre-funding will put postal finances on a stable footing and allow USPS – which is based in the Constitution, funds itself through earned revenue, and enjoys broad public and political support – to continue providing Americans and their businesses with the industrial world’s most-affordable delivery network.

-Fredric Rolando, President of the National Association of Letter Carriers