As a solution, Senator Susan Collins has introduced the "United States Postal Service Commission Act of 2002", legislation that would establish a Presidential Commission to examine the challenges facing the Postal Service, and develop solutions to ensure its long term viability and increased efficiency.
In her opening statement, Collins noted that the last large postal reform, the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act, was also based on the work of a commission. "While I cannot guarantee that a postal commission will succeed today," said Senator Collins, "I can say with increasing certainty that we cannot succeed without one."
"The Postal Service''s problems have reached a near crisis level. Losses are projected to be around$1 billion this year," said Senator Collins. "The need to preserve a viable Postal Service is clear. Americans from Hawaii to northern Maine rely on affordable, reliable, and universal mail service as their primary means of communication." Senator Collins noted that the Postal Service projects that it will turn a profit in Fiscal Year 2003. "That would be quite a turnaround and they are to be congratulated."
Collins questioned Postmaster General Potter regarding several problems of particular concern to Mainers that she has met with recently. The first was steps that the Postal Service was taking to make its rates more predictable. "Mailers in Maine are telling me that they spend more on mailing catalogs than they do on the paper," she noted. "In addition, they are frustrated when they cannot stay within their mailing budgets due to a rate hike." Postmaster General Potter acknowledged that this was a problem, and that the Postal Service was contemplating using phased rates as other nations'' postal services do.
In addition, Collins asked the Postmaster General about a troubling report from the Postal Service''s Inspector General that the Postal Service was not being fully cooperative with the IG in her attempt to oversee its implementation of a sexual harassment policy. "As you will recall, we had problems with sexual harassment in the Portland post office in recent years," Collins reminded the Postmaster General." Postmaster General Potter responded that the Postal Service took the issue of sexual harassment very seriously, had replaced personnel in Maine, and implemented training programs.
The Postal Service is the 11th largest enterprise in the nation. It employees more than 700,000 career employees, and is also the linchpin of a $900 billion mailing industry that employees nine million Americans in diverse fields.