Sponsored Content WEBINAR: ELECTION 2008: E-mail Tips from a Political Insider   WEBINAR: Becoming the Illusionist: The Magic of Using "Brand" to Drive Response without Results Disappearing in the Process   WEBINAR: Score and Win Through Cooperation   TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Holiday's are prime-time for email marketing - maximize your ROI by getting to the inbox   ON DEMAND WEBINAR--MASTER CLASS: High Performance Online and Off-line Strategies for Large Scale Customer Acquisition   FREE WHITE PAPER - Direct Mail and the Internet Find any supplier you need - agencies, CRM, fulfillment, lists, e-commerce, paper, printers, telemarketing, and more. Featured Categories Lists and Data Telemarketing Database Marketing E-commerce Web Marketing Agency & Creative Services Print, Production & Paper Lists and Data Processing :: view all categories Get free access to more than 50,000 list data cards - one of the most comprehensive databases in the industry. >> Search Now DIRECT Buzz Blog Webinars Buyer's Guide Calculators JobZone ListFinder Promo Calendar Research Store E-Newsletters Print Magazine This Month in Direct Magazine Bare Bones Postal reform works. The rate hike that takes effect May 12 is the lowest in memory: an average of 2.88%. And some mail classes are getting even less than that... See Full April Issue

THIS, LADIES AND GENTLEmen, is the 11th year the U.S. postal world has been considering legislative reform. At this point we're about where we left off in the last Congress — that is, bills that seem to win bipartisan support at the committee level but get no further.

The Bush administration remains steadfast regarding the Civil Service Retirement System escrow and the assignment of military-related costs to postal retiree obligations. When the sponsors of H.R. 22 and S. 662 signaled their willingness to do the right thing and get rid of the escrow and return military-related retirement obligations to the Treasury, the administration's folks blanched. For its part, the U.S. Postal Service remains reticent about the topic.

The administration's spokespersons have labored mightily to explain why stiffing postal customers with an additional pension liability is good public policy — a lot of wind and water signifying nothing. No other federal agency has been subjected to the same treatment.

The USPS alone has been tagged with the responsibility to pay for any postal retiree's military service, and the only rationale for it is that the USPS raises money of its own which is ripe for the Treasury's taking. Why? Because the postal service has cash-paying customers that are there for the milking.

Shifting new non-postal retirement obligations to postage-paying citizens and businesses was a political money-grab of the worst kind. It adds to the USPS' burden. It endangers future postal fiscal viability, and promises to impede, not facilitate, economic vitality and growth. It's bad public policy. It's bad fiscal policy, and it should be reversed, not justified via some cockamamie post-hoc rationale.

In short, the administration needs to recognize a reasonable approach to policymaking when it sees one, and do the right thing. End the escrow. Send back military retirement to the Treasury. Set right the postal system's underlying legislative and regulatory framework, and let reform happen. To do anything less should be deemed absolutely unacceptable.

---

GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.