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75–418 PDF 2001

THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE’S UNCERTAIN

FINANCIAL OUTLOOK, PARTS I AND II

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 4, AND MAY 16, 2001

Serial No. 107–10

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

——— ———

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

JAMES C. WILSON, Chief Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on:

April 4, 2001 ..................................................................................................... 1

May 16, 2001 ..................................................................................................... 187

Statement of:

Fineman, S. David, vice chairman, Board of Governors, U.S. Postal Service, accompanied by Tirso Del Junco, Governor, U.S. Postal Service;

Alan C. Kessler, Governor, U.S. Postal Service; Ernesta Ballard, Governor, U.S. Postal Service; and John Walsh, Governor, U.S. Postal

Service ............................................................................................................ 134

Henderson, William J., Postmaster General of the U.S. Postal Service ...... 75

Quinn, William H., national president, National Postal Mail Handlers

Union; Clifford Dailing, secretary-treasurer, National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association; Vincent R. Sombrotto, president, National Association of Letter Carriers; and Moe Biller, president, American Postal

Workers Union, accompanied by William Burrus, executive vice president ................................................................................................................ 298

Schroeder, Pat, president and chief executive officer, Association of American Publishers; Jerry Cerasale, board member, Mailers Council, senior

vice president, Direct Marketing Association, Inc.; John C. Campanelli,

president, R.R. Donnelley Logistics; John T. Estes, executive director,

Main Street Coalition for Postal Fairness; and Gene A. DeL Polito,

president, Association for Postal Commerce ............................................... 211

Walker, David M., Comptroller General of the United States, General

Accounting Office, accompanied by Bernard Ungar, Director, Physical

Infrastructure Team, U.S. General Accounting Office ............................... 28

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Biller, Moe, president, American Postal Workers Union, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 323

Burton, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Indiana, prepared statements of......................................................................... 5, 194

Campanelli, John C., president, R.R. Donnelley Logistics, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 244

Cerasale, Jerry, board member, Mailers Council, senior vice president,

Direct Marketing Association, Inc., prepared statement of ....................... 224

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statements of............................................................... 70, 199

Dailing, Clifford, secretary-treasurer, National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, prepared statement of .................................................................. 309

Del Polito, Gene A., president, Association for Postal Commerce, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 272

Estes, John T., executive director, Main Street Coalition for Postal Fairness, prepared statement of ......................................................................... 254

Fineman, S. David, vice chairman, Board of Governors, U.S. Postal Service, prepared statement of ............................................................................ 136

Henderson, William J., Postmaster General of the U.S. Postal Service,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 77

Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Ohio, prepared statement of .................................................................... 350

Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 17

Manzullo, Hon. Donald, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Illinois, prepared statement of ................................................................ 161

McHugh, Hon. John M., a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statements of ........................................................ 11, 204

Page

IV

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by—Continued

Quinn, William H., national president, National Postal Mail Handlers

Union, prepared statement of ...................................................................... 301

Schroeder, Pat, president and chief executive officer, Association of American Publishers, prepared statement of ...................................................... 214

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 23

Sombrotto, Vincent R., president, National Association of Letter Carriers,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 315

Towns, Hon. Edolphus, a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 158

Walker, David M., Comptroller General of the United States, General

Accounting Office, prepared statement of ................................................... 31

Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 190

(1)

THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE’S UNCERTAIN

FINANCIAL OUTLOOK, PART I

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2001

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Burton (chairman

of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Burton, Gilman, Morella, Shays,

McHugh, Horn, Scarborough, LaTourette, Barr, Ose, Lewis, Putnam, Otter, Schrock, Waxman, Maloney, Norton, Cummings,

Kuchinich, Davis, Turner, Allen, Schakowsky, and Clay.

Staff present: Kevin Binger, staff director; Daniel R. Moll, deputy

staff director; David A. Kass, deputy counsel and parliamentarian;

Mark Corallo, director of communications; John Callender and

Randy Kaplan, counsels; Sarah Anderson, staff assistant; Robert A.

Briggs, chief clerk; Robin Butler, office manager; Michael Canty,

legislative assistant; Josie Duckett, deputy communications director; John Sare, deputy chief clerk; Danleigh Halfast, assistant to

chief counsel; Corinne Zaccagnini, systems administrator; Phil

Schiliro, minority staff director; Phil Barnett, minority chief counsel; Denise Wilson, minority professional staff member; Ellen

Rayner, minority chief clerk; Jean Gosa and Earley Green, minority assistant clerks; and Lorran Garrison, minority staff assistant.

Mr. BURTON. The Committee on Government Reform will come

to order. We expect a vote on the floor on the Journal probably in

about 15 minutes. So, we will get started with opening statements.

After that, we will probably have to break for the vote, but we will

only be gone for about 10 minutes.

A quorum being present, the Committee on Government Reform

will come to order. I ask unanimous consent that all Members and

witnesses written opening statements be included in the record.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that all articles, exhibits and extraneous or tabular material referred to be included in the record.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

I want to welcome everyone to this hearing of the Government

Reform Committee. We are here today to examine the current financial condition of the Postal Service.

As part of the reorganization of our committee structure for the

107th Congress, postal issues will be handled at the full committee

level.

2

As most of you know, I am a veteran of the old committee on

Post Office and Civil Service. I have been extremely active on postal issues for many years.

Representative John McHugh, the former chairman of the Postal

Subcommittee, did an outstanding job for 6 years working on postal

reform. I intend, along with Mr. Waxman, to conduct a vigorous

oversight of the Postal Service and through that oversight we will

work to assure affordable, universal postal service.

The Postal Service is the only government agency that touches

the lives of virtually every household and every American in this

country. In other words, every citizen has a stake in the future of

the Postal Service.

The Service employs over 900,000 people to deliver more than

668 million pieces of mail every day.

At the outset, let me say that I am concerned about the news

coming out of the Postal headquarters. They are predicting a $2 to

$3 billion loss this fiscal year, the same year that they just raised

postal rates.

My first reaction was disbelief, especially in view of the fact that

in the last couple of years there has been a surplus. My second reaction was grave concern when I was informed that the Postal

Service intends to file for another rate increase in just a few

months.

In the past I have been critical of the Postal Service because

their first response to every financial shortfall appears to be to

raise rates. An increase of the magnitude proposed between $6 and

$8 billion total revenue, is astronomical. That represents a 10-percent increase in over all revenues.

This kind of increase would drive businesses away from the Postal Service. Some mailers would be forced to seek alternative means

of communication. Others very well could be driven into bankruptcy. I view this as a slippery slope for the Postal Service.

This rate increase, combined with the revenue drain being

caused by the information technology revolution spells long-term

trouble for the Service. The alternative to raising rates is to do

what every private sector business does when its sales decline: cut

costs and increase quality of service.

You know, if General Motors or Chrysler has financial difficulties

and their sales drop, they don’t raise the cost of the car to make

up for the deficiency. They try to figure out ways to streamline, to

economize and to make sure that they are going to be competitive

in the marketplace. That same principle should be applied to the

Postal Service.

The alternative to raising rates, as I said, is to do what every

private business does when its sales decline. That is to cut costs

and increase service quality.

Today, I hope to hear a specific plan from the Postmaster General about what steps are being taken to reduce expenses. The

Postal Service has announced plans to immediately freeze capital

commitments for improvements to postal facilities. This will reportedly save about $1 billion. More cost containment options must be

examined. Nothing should be off of the table. Another rate increase

should be the last option and not the first.

3

Today, I am calling on the Postal Service to work together with

all stakeholders to examine all possible ways to cut costs. I am confident that we can find the savings without affecting the quality of

mail service.

If we can succeed with significant cost containment, this will

allow the Postal Service to push back the filing for the next rate

increase or to eliminate it entirely. The current economic slowdown

adds to the dire financial straits in which the postal service finds

itself.

However, the larger, long-term problem is the regulatory model

that is nearly three decades old. It does not provide the Postal

Service with the flexibility needed to succeed in a rapidly changing

market.

Again, I want to pay tribute to my colleague, John McHugh.

John labored for years trying to develop legislation to fix the Postal

Service before the crisis hit. Well, John, it looks like you are the

only guy in this room who has the right to say, ‘‘I told you so.’’

I think this situation is akin to the current energy crisis occurring in California. Nobody took the steps necessary to fix the problems early on. Now, we have rolling blackouts and price spikes.

We are in the early stages of a similar crisis in the Postal Service. If we take the necessary steps now to fix the problems, maybe

we can avoid a full-blown crisis over the next few years. I am sure

there are some naysayers in this room who believe that the information technology revolution in not real, that advertisers are not

moving over to the internet, that consumers are not going to pay

their utility bills on line, that none of this supposed change will

have an impact on the Postal Service and their revenues.

These folks remind me of people who said the entertainment industry would never replace silent movies with the newfangled talkies.

Today we will be hearing from a number of distinguished witnesses to examine the current financial problems at the Postal

Service. Our first witness is the head of the General Accounting Office, the watchdog for the legislative branch, Comptroller General

David Walker. General Walker has had a team of experts working

to help this committee analyze the data we are receiving from the

Postal Service.

Our second witness is a man I want to pay a special tribute to,

Postmaster General Bill Henderson. General Henderson is completing his tenure at the helm of the Postal Service. He has presided

over a period of great turmoil, a time of some detours, a few potholes, but also much progress. I want to thank you, Bill, for your

30 years to service to the country.

Our last panel will consist of five members of the Board of Governors of the Postal Service. In addition to directing and controlling

the expenditures of the Postal Service, the Board has the difficult

task of selecting the new Postmaster General.

I welcome all of our witnesses and look forward to their testimony.

Before I yield to Mr. Waxman, let me say I have discussed briefly

with him the need to work out a bipartisan solution to this crisis.

He has extended his hand in friendship to me and we are going to

4

try our best to see if we can’t come up with a bill that will solve

the problems that we are facing.

I believe he feels this is a necessity as well as I do. Hopefully,

with bipartisan support, we can reach agreement. Toward that end

I would like to suggest that all segments, and this is very important, I hope everybody listens to this part because we as legislators

can’t do this by ourselves.

Toward that end, it would like to suggest that all segments of the

postal community sit down together and make recommendations to

Mr. Waxman and myself as to how this problem can be solved.

That is going to take some compromise. Everybody is going to have

to sit down together, the postal unions, the postmasters, the people

who do a lot of mailing, the mass markets, the magazine publishers, all of you have to sit down, the packet deliverers, and try to

find out where you have some commonality so we can get a product

that we can get through the Congress.

If they make recommendations to Mr. Waxman and myself on

how to solve this problem, then we think we can get it solved. This

process will hopefully lead to a legislative proposal that can pass

the House, the Senate and be signed by the President.

Compromise, as I said, is clearly necessary. Those who do not realize this and fail to participate in the process do so at their own

peril. The reason I say that is if you stay out of the mix and we

come up with a solution to this problem with which you do not

agree and you have not participated in the process, Mr. Waxman

and I may draft a bill.

It may pass the House with both Democrat and Republican support and pass the Senate and get to the President and something

you feel is necessary in the bill may have been left out.

So, please appoint somebody from your area to work with other

members of the community to come up with a proposal that you

can present to Mr. Waxman or myself that we can work with. If

we do that, I think we can come up with a product we will be

happy with and the American people will be satisfied with.

With that, Mr. Waxman, do you have an opening statement?

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Burton follows:]

5

6

7

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am going to hold my opening statement because Mr. Gilman has a meeting with President

Mubarak of Eqypt. I want to allow him to go first. Peace in the

Middle East is a very high priority. Peace in the Postal Service is

a secondary priority.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Waxman, for yielding. Mr. Chairman I want to thank you for conducting this hearing this morning.

Along with Chairman Burton, as a long-time because of our

former Postal Committee and now the inactive Postal Subcommittee, I am pleased that our full committee is going to now devote

time and attention to this important issue facing our U.S. Postal

Service.

It is important that we examine all of the factors leading up to

the Postal Service current financial projections. We have all read

the news reports and the memos and have met with our local Postal Supervisors, Postmasters, and labor leaders concerning the $3

billion of debt that the Postal Service now finds itself confronting.

In fact, in my own Congressional District in New York at the

new City Post Office, I have been hearing of manpower shortages

which already exist, and now we are learning that the Postal Service may have to cut jobs even more in order to help control costs.

Accordingly, I am left to wonder how the Postal Service will

maintain the core mission of universal service. There are many reasons we can point at to answer just how the Postal Service has

found itself in these troubled waters today.

Continued decline in volume, insufficient revenues, electronic

communication are just some of the problems confronting the Postal Service. However, these factors have all been foreshadowed by

our colleague, Congressman John McHugh over the past two Congresses as he worked diligently to try to bring postal reform before

the committee and before the Congress.

We cannot now throw up our hands in dismay and wonder how

the Postal Service has arrived at this point when in fact we have

known for some time that these factors do exist. The Postal Service

must also be prepared to take responsibility for the difficult economic times they are now experiencing.

The Postal Service has known for some time the problems and

inefficiencies in the postal system which do exist. Both the GAO

and the Postal Service’s Inspector General has repeatedly testified

before our Postal Subcommittee on the difficulties that the Service

has had in realizing opportunities on savings.

Accordingly, Mr. Chairman, I am hopeful that today’s hearing

will provide our committee with the consensus needed to move forward on postal reform, as well as to provide the Postal Service with

the understanding that in order to survive and perform its core

mission changes in management practices are going to have to be

made to implement and be adhered to.

I want to thank Mr. Waxman again for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Gilman. Give President Mubarak

our regards.

Mr. Waxman.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend Mr.

Gilman on his statement and wish him well in his meetings.

8

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing and putting

this issue on the agenda with a sense of priority, which you have

articulated so well.

I look forward to working with you because I think reforms in

this area should be bipartisan. As a Member of Congress, we all

know too well the enormous undertaking that postal employees do

every day. In good weather and bad, postal workers haul and deliver our letters and packages and we thank them for their efforts.

But some serious challenges confront the Postal Service. Two

months ago the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors reported

the Postal Service will suffer a $2 to $3 billion deficit for fiscal year

2001. Since that announcement, the Board has called for an immediate freeze on capital commitments and is looking at reducing

mail delivery service to 5 days and consolidating Post Offices. Some

say the Postal Service is in the midst of a crisis.

Well, I look forward to learning more about these problems from

today’s hearing and the presentations of the witnesses that we

have scheduled. I also look forward to learning more about these

issues through the activities of the Postal Caucus, which is chaired

by Representative Danny Davis.

I encourage all members on our committee to study these issues

and join our Postal Caucus.

I am committed to sensible postal legislation. Last year, with the

support of many of my colleagues, I introduced H.R. 2535, the Postal Service Enhancement Act. It operated from the premise that the

Postal Service performs a valuable service that should be strengthened and enhanced. The legislation provided ratemaking flexibility,

negotiated service agreements, and phased-in postal rates. It also

established a Presidential Commission to identify waste and inefficiency in the Postal Service and provided enhanced authorities for

the Postal Rate Commission. Unfortunately, the measure was not

considered by this committee.

In the face of calls for postal legislation, we need to analyze the

Postal Service’s financial condition. We need to determine an accurate projection of postal revenues and losses and examine the procedures the Postal Service uses to track its actual costs and savings

from productivity initiatives. We need to know the causes of postal

deficits and identify structural or operational issues that could impact the Service’s ability to provide affordable universal postal

service.

We also need to make sure that the Postal Service is acting responsibly. For example, the freeze on construction of new facilities

is dramatic action. We need to examine whether the freeze is justified by the facts. If it is simply an attempt to garner headlines and

pressure Congress, the action will create ill will and be counterproductive.

I know the chairman is interested in working on these important

issues in a bipartisan fashion. I welcome his initiative and look forward to working with him and all of our colleagues on this committee on how to reform the Postal Service, deal with its fiscal problems, and serve the needs of the American people.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Waxman.

9

We have about 5 minutes before we have to leave for the vote.

Do any other Members at this time have opening statements?

Mr. McHugh, we will go to you and then we will come back to

Mr. Davis.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to be brief.

Everyone was saying such nice things about me, I couldn’t help but

be reminded of a quote attributed to Mickey Mantle, one of my heroes, when he said, ‘‘If I knew I was going to live this long I would

have taken better care of myself.’’ If I had known I was going to be so right, I probably would have

worked harder. I do appreciate the kind things that have been said.

I would like, Mr. Chairman, to submit for the record my complete

statement that is available here for anyone who might be interested, and just say a few words in summary, not the least of which

is to express my personal gratitude to you, Mr. Chairman.

You were kind enough to say I was the only person in the room

who had the right to say, ‘‘I told you so.’’ With all due respect, I

disagree. I think there are a number of people in this room, and

it starts with you, Mr. Chairman, and extends to the good people

who served on both sides of the aisle in the Postal Service Subcommittee, including Mr. Davis, Mr. Fattah in his ranking membership, and others who did work hard and who recognized this

problem.

Unfortunately, I think they are not too surprised by the developments that we have seen over the past several months. Beyond

those good people, I have to pay particular tribute to the Postmaster General, Bill Henderson, who took incredible leadership,

and I suspect, not a small amount of criticism from amongst his

peers for the rather daring positions that he took.

I want to join with you, Mr. Chairman, in wishing him all the

best in the future. He has certainly earned whatever good things

will come to him. Although we will miss him, I know he will be a

great addition to whatever efforts he dedicates himself to in the future.

We do have some folks here with us today, too, that have been

very, very supportive of the subcommittee’s efforts over the past 6

years to identify these problems: the GAO, the Inspector General,

the Congressional Research Service. They have said to us repeatedly that, in fact, the Postal Service is at the end of an era. Those

were the words used by the GAO in 1999.

As I noted during our last Postal Subcommittee hearing some 7

months ago, ‘‘Folks, we are fooling ourselves if we think that the

growing pressure of declining revenues and increased costs at the

base of the Postal Service does not require Congress to act and at

long last to begin to address this very, very serious situation.’’

We did have a base bill—a base bill that I am pleased to say was

reported unanimously twice with Republican and Democrat support

from the subcommittee. But, because of the reality of Washington

where on far too many occasions the urgent overcomes the merely

important, the bill was not able to be advanced further.

We now have a crisis. The time to delude ourselves to the contrary is past. The statistics, the proposals that we have heard over

the past several weeks, I think, underscore that—a $2 to $3 billion

operating deficit for this current fiscal year.

10

The Service will reach its statutory debt limit of $15 billion by

October 1st of this year. The Postal Service is running out of cash

and has already cut capital spending by some $1 billion; 800 postal

facilities due for construction or rehabilitation in every district and

every community in this country will be put aside.

There was an announcement yesterday that the Postal Service is

seriously considering the possibility of terminating Saturday deliveries. This is only the beginning.

I agree fully with the chairman that the Postal Service has to

draw upon every option as the first direction in trying to meet this

challenge. Rate increases are something we would like to see avoided at all possible costs. But at the end of the day, I would say to

my colleagues: This is Congress’ responsibility.

When all of the efforts are made and whatever failures or successes might come, it is each Member of the 435 Member House

that has to go home and tell his or her constituents why it is that

the Postal Service is not able to perform its core function, because

Congress failed to act.

I want to add my voice to those of the chairman, Mr. Waxman,

Mr. Davis and others who stand ready to work on a bipartisan

basis because this is not a matter of politics. It is a matter of policy. It is a matter of service to the people of this country. We owe

it to them to work within our abilities to at long last bring about

meaningful postal reform that meets all of the concerns of the incredibly diverse universe that is the Postal Service.

So, Mr. Chairman, I am looking forward to that effort. Thank

you for your leadership. I am looking forward to the comments here

today.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John M. McHugh follows:]

11

12

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you for your leadership, Mr. McHugh. We

will start with Mr. Davis when we come back.

We will stand in recess to the call of the gavel.

[Recess.]

Mr. BURTON. The Chair now recognizes the ranking member on

the former Post Office and Civil Service Subcommittee, Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am

pleased to join with you today at the first full committee hearing

devoted solely to the U.S. Postal Service. Although this is not a

general postal oversight hearing, it is timely given the recent developments in the financial status of the Postal Service.

As a member of the former Subcommittee on the Postal Service

for a number of years, I can personally attest to the importance of

the Postal Service, the service that it provides to the American people across this Nation.

Postal clerks, mail handlers, letter carriers, police inspectors and

others are engaged on a daily basis in the delivery, processing and

protection of our mail system.

As a member of the former subcommittee, I can also speak first

hand to the efforts of Representative John McHugh and his staff

to change the structure and operation of the Postal Service. This

change is embodied in H.R. 22, the Postal Modernization Act,

which was unanimously voted from the subcommittee in April

1999.

This bipartisan action taken 2 years ago was an acknowledgement of the insight and the hard work of Representative McHugh.

It also allowed us the opportunity to further define and refine postal legislation in the full committee setting.

Unfortunately, while many in the postal community wanted

change, agreement on just what that change should look like and

how far it should go proved illusive. In July 1999, ranking member,

Henry Waxman and Representative Chaka Fattah, former ranking

member of the Postal Subcommittee, introduced legislation, H.R.

2535, the Postal Enhancement Act. This, too, was in response to

those wishing for change, although on a much narrower scope than

the Postal Modernization Act.

Since then and now the Postal Service continues to push for

change in the area or people, prices, and products. In addressing

the people portion, the Board of Governors recently sent letters to

the Hill pointing out that the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act establishes, ‘‘a system of collective bargaining followed by compulsory

arbitration that mitigates against a negotiated settlement and

which, moreover, has often placed some 80 percent of our total

costs in the hands of a third-party arbitrator with neither understanding of nor the responsibility for our role and mission.’’

The Board has gone on to say that current postal law does not

provide a mechanism to control wage rates. Relative to prices and

products, the Board want to adjust postage rates quickly and offer

new products in response to market changes and needs.

This hearing is timely because it allows us to pick up where we

left off in the last Congress, with one exception. The Postal Service

is now predicting a deficit of somewhere between $2 and $3 billion

and a crisis is apparently at hand.

14

To its credit, the Postal Service and Board have begun to take

steps to stabilize the situation. The Postal Service has warned us

that their ability to deliver universal service is at risk without

postal reform.

The Board has called for an immediate freeze on capital commitments. The Postmaster General has just announced that it will cut

$2.5 billion in costs, eliminate 75,000 jobs and create a new mailing

industry task force to assess the role and value of hard copy mail

and identify opportunities for future growth.

Of course, just yesterday the Board directed management to

study cost savings associated with reduction in the delivery of service to 5 days and consolidate postal facilities.

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you and ranking

member, Henry Waxman, Representative McHugh and others as

we seriously examine the Postal Service’s financial status. As the

newly elected chair of the newly created Bipartisan Congressional

Postal Caucus, I invite all of my colleagues and urge them to join

so that we will have many opportunities to engage in discussion

relative to the current state of the Postal Service.

I believe that this medium would be an excellent chance to really

seriously understand, as well as further hammer out possibilities

as we deal with the realities of our situation.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership. I look forward

to our seriously tackling this problem. I thank you very much and

yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Mr. Barr.

Mr. BARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to echo the

comments of Mr. Davis. I thank you for your leadership on this

issue. I think the U.S. Postal Service is clearly important enough

so this ought to be a topic for our full committee.

I appreciate, as always, your taking the leadership on key issues.

As have many Members of Congress, I have lived and worked

overseas. I know, through having suffered through postal services

in other countries, how fortunate we are here in America to have

the finest postal service anywhere in the world. As probably most

Members do, I work very closely with our post offices in our district. I work very closely with our Postmasters, as well as the men

and women who perform the vital service of delivering our mail.

That being said, Mr. Chairman, I am very disturbed by the recent reports of financial difficulties in the Postal Service. I think

it is very timely that we look very, very carefully and comprehensively at what has caused what appears to be a very, very sudden

turn-around.

I am also very concerned about reports that we continue to receive about excessive bonuses, excessive reimbursement for relocating employees, limousines, lavish parties. Hopefully, all of those reports that we are getting and all of the discussions that we get

from business of the Postal Service are all wrong in those regards.

Maybe we can clear the record on that here today.

If they are not completely made up, though, we do have some serious problems with how moneys are being spent. Also, I am extremely concerned about reports that are now surfacing that the

Postal Service wants to cut out Saturday delivery. I think that

15

would be the worst thing possible that they could do for themselves.

There is nothing that would hasten people’s interest in pursuing

other forms of delivering mail than that sort of ‘‘cut off your nose

to spite your face’’ activity or proposal by the Postal Service. Hopefully, we will get this cleared up today and the Postal Service leadership will tell us that those reports are completely inaccurate, that

the Postal Service will be proud to continue delivering mail to the

American people and American businesses 6 days a week, Mr.

Chairman.

If those reports are not completely false and if we hear from the

Postal Service today that they are indeed even contemplating that,

then I think that we will be in a situation of looking at dramatically changing the authority that the Postal Service has. I think

that they will put themselves in a box that will result in American

businesses and citizens looking for alternative means of having

their mail delivered. This would be one of the most self-defeating

proposals that I have ever heard in my life, Mr. Chairman.

I think your hearing today could not be more timely. I appreciate

the witnesses coming forward. I look forward to a very, very productive hearing, not only today, but as you continue to exert leadership on this issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Barr.

Who was here first? Why don’t we go to that lovely lady? Yield

to Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. MALONEY. I would be delighted to yield to Mr. Kucinich,

since he has seniority over me.

Mr. KUCINICH. Please go ahead.

Mrs. MALONEY. What a gentleman. Thank you.

First of all, I want to be associated with the comments of many

of my colleagues. I certainly agree with Congressman McHugh

from the great State of New York, and the chairman that this is

a bipartisan issues; it is a policy issue, one that we should all care

about and all work on.

I agree with Mr. Barr, we do have the best Postal Service in the

world and one that should continue 6 days a week.

I would like to summarize my remarks and put my full comments into the record. I am very glad that this hearing is being

held. I want to really express the distress that I had earlier in a

former year when the Postal Committee was abolished and really

merged into the Government Reform and Oversight Committee and

this year the Postal Subcommittee was eliminated.

Certainly, a quality universal Postal Service is incredibly important to every American. I was very distressed when the subcommittee was eliminated. I am glad that my colleague, Mr. Davis, along

with friends on the other side of the aisle have formed a Task

Force on Postal Service, of which I am a member. I applaud them

for taking that leadership role.

I think that everyone in this room has got to be upset by the revenue estimates generated by the Postal Service in recent months.

What makes the situation even more confusing is that the estimates generated by the USPS are so entirely different from their

own projections as recently as last year.

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Now, I just want to say that one of the things that happened last

year was the rate increase. Now, this rate increase was supposed

to ensure that the USPS would not repeat last year’s financial

problems.

But now, just a few months later, the Postal Service tells us that

we are looking at a $2 to $3 billion loss.

My main question today is really a management question. How

in the world did this change so much and so quickly? Now, the

Postal Service hearings said that they would like more flexibility.

They would like more flexibility to run the Post Office more like

a private business.

But I have to say, what business in this country would even

dream of succeeding with such poor planning and projections?

So I think we really have to look at the management. Even with

these unclear, uncertain financial projections, the USPS has basically shouted from the rooftops about their problem, the situation

that they face. You know, the sky is falling, we are in a terrible

situation. They are saying that the only thing that can save the

Post Office is radical postal reform.

Now, indeed everyone needs to reform every year. We need to reform the Post Office and all of our agencies for a 21st century operation. But we cannot forget that the Post Office was created to

serve all Americans in a convenient and affordable manner and we

have to make sure that continues.

We cannot make radical policy decisions based on unclear projections. Just last month, the Post Office and the Postal Service

stopped all work on all capital projects across the Nation.

Yesterday, in a move that I believe was timed to raise the profile

of this hearing, the Post Office announced that it was considering

eliminating Saturday service and closing postal facilities.

Now, believe me, we are all concerned about the Post Office’s financial situation, but we cannot even begin to identify solutions to

these problems if we do not have a clear picture and view of where

we are going, if we don’t have clear planning.

I am very pleased to see Mr. Walker here, the General Accounting Officer. I know that he will speak about some of the reforms

they believe the Post Office should pursue, including better tracking of costs, expenses and capital assets. I am very eager to hear

their views and gain a better perspective on how accurate USPS

projections are and just what is needed to ensure their future financial stability.

I am also interested to learn from the Postal Service why their

projections have changed so dramatically and whether they have

implemented some of the efficiencies they have previously claimed

would save $700 million a year.

So, hopefully today’s hearing will shed some light on these and

other issues surrounding the operation of the Post Office and help

us guarantee that the Postal Service remains a modern and effective organization for the 21st century and beyond.

Thank you very much for having this hearing, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mrs. Maloney.

Mrs. Morella.

Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and also Ranking

Member Waxman for holding this critical hearing on the uncertain

financial future of the U.S. Postal Service. I do also associate myself with the comments of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

After 5 years of operating at a surplus and comparably minor

loss in fiscal year 2000, the Postal Service’s announcement of a po- tential $2 to $3 billion deficit in fiscal year 2001 is quite disconcerting. Such a dismal national projection and reports of yet another

increase in postal rates has taken my constituents and me by surprise after only recently becoming accustomed to the recent 1-cent

stamp increase.

In fact, in January of this year the Postal Service increased rates

an average of 4.6 percent. While it was not the 6 percent increase

the service sought, at that time it was believed to be sufficient.

Today I am interested in learning what has caused the Postal

Service to abruptly fall into such a state of disrepair that they

would be projecting losses in the same calendar year that they

raised rates.

To the defense of the Postal Service, I understand how difficult

it must be to operate like a self-supporting business, as intended

by Congress, without the flexibility of price control and within the

framework of an antiquated piece of legislation.

However the constraints of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970

are not new challenges for the Postal Service and therefore do not

sufficiently explain such a dramatic reversal of financial fortune

over this past fiscal year.

In addition, this committee is well aware that increased competition from private delivery companies and electronic communication

alternatives such as the Internet, have led to substantial declines

in the Service’s first class mail volume.

These challenges will only grow over the next decade as

broadband Internet access is extended to each residence. I hope

that our witnesses will be able to inform this committee as to what

action has been taken to better compete during this ever-evolving

information age and how successful these actions have been.

For instance, what success has the Postal Service experienced

with its e-commerce ventures, e-bill pay and online bill paying

service and postal CS and electronic delivery service?

Finally, I am also concerned with some of the Postal Service’s

short and long-term strategies to address its financial frustrations.

Today the media reports that the Postal Service Board of Governors has directed management to study the cost savings associated with reducing delivery service to 5 days a week.

I feel that this cost cutting approach will compromise the Postal

Service commitment to universal service and its renowned reputation for customer service. We do think the number of delivery days

will have a devastating impact on our economy and should in no

way be pursued as a viable option.

Our reliable and affordable Postal Service is the hallmark of our

Nation’s infrastructure. In many neighborhoods, the post office

plays a more active role in the fabric of the community than simply

providing a facility for the dissemination of mail.

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For instance, in my district, Garrett Park, the postmaster, the

postal workers and the facility provide a healthy environment for

local residents to meet, discuss issues of concern as they pick up

their mail.

Whatever action is taken to resolve this financial crisis, we urge

the Postal Service to preserve this, which has become the last remaining vestige of our great American culture.

I look forward to a bipartisan resolution of this. I thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. I thank the gentlelady.

Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. The new 34-cent stamp, U.S. postal stamp,

has a depiction of the Statue of Liberty. I think it is appropriate

at this time in our deliberations about the Postal Service that we

reflect on this stamp. Yes, it costs 34 cents and for that 34 cents

people have reliable service, service that is accountable.

But more than that, this 34 cents and this stamp representing

the Statue of Liberty speaks to the Postal Service in another way

and that is that the Postal Service is connected to a basic freedom

that the people of this country have, an ability to communicate

with one another, that for 34 cents you can send a message across

the country.

You don’t have to own a computer. You can send a message to

anywhere in the country. You can send a message from Cleveland,

OH where I live, to a small town in Alaska, where only a few hundred people live. You can enable people to communicate with each

other all around this country, and with the help of the Postal Service all over the world.

So, the U.S. Postal Service is really about freedom as much as

it is about a service. The U.S. Postal Service has for countless

years provided a universal service.

We have to step back and think about the purpose of government

here. Government certainly exists to provide a service. We hope

that government doesn’t lose money in doing that, but sometimes

that happens.

The Honorable Inspector General stood before one of our subcommittees recently and told us that the Department of Defense,

which provides a service, cannot reconcile $2.3 trillion of accounting entries. We are talking about billions of dollars; they were talking about $2.3 trillion in accounting entries.

Would anyone suggest that we go to mercenaries as opposed to

a Department of Defense in order to somehow have better service?

No, we try to solve the problems that we have with the defense

budget.

In Social Security, there were projections that Social Security

was going to have a shortfall. The forces for privatization marched

into Congress and said, ‘‘Well, now we must turn Social Security

over to the stock market.’’

Would anyone suggest that today? Because everyone knew the

truism that what goes up must come down. The market went down.

People are saying prayers of thanksgiving that the money was not

invested in the stock market.

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Years ago, prior to the privatization of Medicare, we saw people

getting service, the best service they could get, through the help of

the Federal Government, the Medicare Program, but the privatization of Medicare through Medicare HMOs resulted in service going

down and costs going up.

So, let us look at our Postal Service, the universal service, the

government service, this public service which provides the same

service for everyone, no matter what social or economic class, no

matter whether they live in the city, the suburb or rural areas, a

service which is accountable to this Congress. That is why we have

this hearing here today. A service where someone can call us if

they are not satisfied with us and a Member of Congress can find

out why not.

We understand that there are individuals interested in privatization, who look at the Post Office not as a service to be rendered

to the American people, but as an opportunity for making profit.

We understand that. This is a great country that provides everyone

an opportunity to make money. That is one of the great things

about America.

But we are talking about a government service here. We are

talking about a public responsibility that we have to make sure the

American people can communicate to everyone.

So, as we move forward with these deliberations, let us not forget

the excellent work that is being done by the men and women of the

U.S. Postal Service. Let us be grateful for a service that we have

had that has enabled Americans to communicate with each other.

Let us not forget the responsibility that we have to keep this

service intact, to get it through its current financial difficulties and

put it on the path where it can continue many more generations

of serving the American people.

I thank the chairman for holding this hearing.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Kucinich.

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Aging and anachronistic infrastructures pose an ominous threat

to our economic well being. The President eloquently and passionately decries the human and fiscal cost of a public education system hobbled by low expectations and poor performance.

Energy consumers are just beginning to pay the price demanded

by long-neglected energy production and conservation systems.

Interstate commerce is slower and most costly due to crumbling

highways and railroad bridges.

Today, we discuss the decay besetting another national economic

pipeline, the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS. With increased competition from economic, electronic mail, Faxes, the Internet and unregulated shippers, both foreign and domestic, the USPS appears

to have entered a death spiral.

Cost controls and productivity increases remain limited and elusive. Required by law to raise rates to meet costs, each price increase drives more consumers away. It wasn’t meant to be this

way.

The current statutory structure reformed a 1970’s Post Office unquestionably dominant and financially capable of providing universal service. Never intended to operate as a competitive enterprise,

22

the USPS we see today was designed to operate as a government

service and entry-level employer.

But the world has changed much in three decades. The laws governing postal operations, human capital management and rate setting have not. As a result, today’s Postal Service is a lumbering behemoth, a dinosaur forced to raise gazelles.

I am concerned that we as custodians of this national economic

asset seem able only to tinker at the margins of the problem while

the need for fundamental structural reform of the postal delivery

system goes unmet.

I hope this hearing and those that will surely follow will move

us toward a modern, efficient, and affordable postal system that

will empower, not impede, national economic well being.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Shays.

Ms. Schakowsky.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to welcome

our distinguished witnesses here today to discuss the Postal Service’s financial standing. I look forward to their testimony.

I would like to associate myself with Mr. Kucinich’s remarks and

I, too, want to acknowledge the importance and the generally excellent work of the Postal Service and the postal workers and letter

carriers.

That being said, news of financial problems at the Postal Service

concerns me and my constituents. Postal issues rate among the

highest concerns of my constituents in the Chicago area.

There are over 1,200 postal employees working in the Ninth Congressional District. I am repeatedly informed by some letter carriers that our postal workers have to work long hours and sometimes double and triple shifts.

I hear that from constituents, that letter carriers work routes

with which they are not familiar as substitutes leading to a less

timely and accurate delivery of the mail.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I am aware that the Postal Service has

put a halt to all capital commitments. This decision has put a stop

to two projects in my district, one in Skokie and one in Edgebrook.

In Illinois, there are a total of 25 projects scheduled for 2001 that

are currently on hold.

We all need to look very seriously at the reasons for halting

these projects that could improve service to consumers and the various proposals for improving this system so that postal workers and

postal customers are fairly treated and served.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope our GAO and Postal Service

witnesses can address some of these issues for the committee

today.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Ms. Schakowsky.

Mr. Otter.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am

going to shorten my remarks considerably so we have more time

for questions. I think there is going to be a lot more to gain because

of what the other Members have already said relative to the Postal

Service today.

Mr. Chairman, a lack of accountability and oversight has given

the U.S. Postal Service free rein to stray from its core mission of

delivering the mail. The Postal Service has an unfair competitive

advantage over the private sector because of its monopoly in revenues and in privileges.

As a result, private competitors and taxpayers are economically

disadvantaged and the mail users are forced to pay ever-increasing

stamp prices. The Postal Service brings in $50 billion every year

from its monopoly on letter mail. Yet, it continues to seek other

sources of revenue.

Recently the Postal Service lost $85 million, it was reported, to

try to create new market ventures for things such as phone cards,

videos, TV, tee shirts, baseball caps, stationary, greeting cards,

ties, and also by selling advertising on its vehicles.

The Postal Service has maintained a $300 to $500 million annual

advertising budget, despite the fact that it has no competition in

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the first class monopoly. The Postal Service has used this advertising money to directly compete with companies who must necessarily operate in the private sector without all of the perks of a

government agency like the Postal Service.

The U.S. Postal Service productivity has increased only 11 percent over the last three decades, even with all the advantages that

we have seen in technology.

Time and again the Postal Service has said it will work on reducing costs and increasing productivity. Taking a look at one item,

twice the Postal Service has paid for studies that were done for an

annual cost for processing undeliverable as addressed mail.

It appears that the Postal Service has not significantly changed

the way that it deals with undeliverable as addressed mail because

it continues to lose $1.5 billion annually on that alone.

From 1995 to 1999, the Postal Service has budgeted $8.5 billion

on capital investment in automation and mechanization equipment.

However, it only spent $5.2 billion. The Postal Service portrays the

image that it is not concerned with productivity or enhancing their

efficiency. This is of great concern. Yet they still want another postal rate increase.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, with the projections of this year’s deficit at $2.3 billion, the Postal Service needs

to refocus their mission on delivering the first class mail. Stop

using taxpayer money to compete with the private sector and start

making sound business decisions and ultimately need a thorough

review by this committee and this Congress.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BARR [assuming Chair]. I thank the gentleman.

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Clay, for

5 minutes.

Mr. CLAY. I will forego any opening statement and will wait for

questions.

Mr. BARR. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.

The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Schrock, is recognized if he

has an opening statement.

Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really do not have an

opening statement except to say that I agree with almost everything I have heard from my colleagues here. At the appropriate

time and after we have heard from our witnesses, I, too, have five

or six questions I would like to ask.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BARR. Thank you, sir.

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr.

Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am glad

we are holding this hearing on the Postal Service’s current financial position and the impact postal loss projections will have on the

ability of the agency to fulfill a statutory mission under the Postal

Reorganization Act of 1970.

Before I go on, I just want to thank all the men and women of

the Postal Service who deliver the mail 6 days a week and do a

very good job in my district and, I am sure, across the Nation.

26

We all want a stable and strong Postal Service. The Postal Service processes about 208 billion pieces of mail a year or about 680

million pieces of mail every day.

Additionally, the Postal Service delivers mail to over 5,600 new addresses a day. It generates $65 billion in operating revenues and

operates 38,000 Post Offices, stations and branches.

For several years postal reform has been a big issue before this

committee and Congress. In the 106th Congress, Congressman

McHugh introduced H.R. 22, the Postal Modernization Act. And

Congressman Waxman introduced H.R. 2535, the Postal Enhancement Act.

The Subcommittee on the Postal Service held hearings on both

of these reform items. There is widespread agreement that reform

is needed for the Postal Service. This committee has the oversight

responsibility to explore exactly what type of reform is needed.

The Postal Service must develop a long-range strategic plan that

truly assesses postal reform. I look forward to hearing the testimony of our witnesses, David M. Walker, William J. Henderson,

and S. David Fineman. I hope they will be able to help us examine

postal losses and revenues, postal rate increases, deficit and mail

volume projections, competition, information technology and budget

forecasting.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BARR. I thank the gentleman.

The chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Horn.

Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know we need to get to

the excellent witnesses. But I just want to mention a few things.

One is, I don’t think any of us have any problem with the letter

carriers and clerks we know. I have spent 30 years in Long Beach.

I have never had a problem with anybody behind a counter or anybody walking the mail. That started when I was a little kid on a

farm. Mr. Cagney, the rural carrier, was not only a newspaper for

the rest of the county, but also sent our mail around the world.

But what I do have a problem with is some of the supervisors

and some of the central operations here in Washington.

Let me give you an example. I talked to 100 injured Federal

workers one afternoon. Sixty of them came out of the Postal Service. One of them, after the truck had fallen on his foot or something, he asked for the form to file under the Federal Workers’

Compensation law. The Postal supervisor wouldn’t give him that.

Why? Because that supervisor, is performance is that you don’t

have these things happening. Apparently, that is the way the system works. Well, I think it is a lousy way to work when it does

that. Until the supervisors start helping people and the central

Postal administration here starts thinking about people, we are

never going to get anywhere with the Postal Service.

I guess when I heard that Postmaster General Runyon had

$100,000 spent on his farewell dinner and all, I must say, I get a

little upset, as one who cares about the taxpayers’ money, to say

the least, and any agency’s money.

We finally got a Post Office person in Long Beach that started

things moving. His name was Mr. Shapiro. He will probably be

punished now that I have said that. After all, somebody in the line

is helping people. What do you know?

27

The fact is that the city of Long Beach, half a million people, surrounds the city of Signal Hill with 10,000 people. We want a zip

code for them. Why? Because all their insurance rates go up when

they use the zip codes coming from the inner city of Long Beach,

CA.

I think that is just outrageous, not to get a decent zip code for

the city. Now, they can make laughter down there and all the rest

of it. But I would say the Post Office, when it starts acting like a

humane institution, I will have more respect for it. But right now,

with the management of the Postal Department, I am not happy

about it.

I want them to know about it and get off their seats and start

getting something done.

So, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to the witnesses.

Mr. BURTON [resuming Chair]. Thank you, Mr. Horn.

Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just a few remarks.

I hope we are not at another low point for the Post Office. We

encountered such a point in the early 1990’s when there was a

great deal of oversight from this committee. We may recall that

mail delivery times around the country were terrible, none worse

than here in Washington, DC, where official mail as well as residential mail was delivered at times that were among the worst in

the country.

To their credit, the Post Office improved extraordinarily in delivery mail times. I am not sure what it is today, but there was cosmic improvement after some oversight here and management focused on the problem.

That leads me to believe that if management focuses on the problems that have arisen today, they, too, can be solved. I don’t agree

with my friends on the other side that the Post Office can still deliver mail at low rates and not become more market oriented.

Certainly they are going to have to compete with the private sector if they are going to keep the cost of mail down for the average

person who must depend on the mail. They, unlike Members of

Congress, except for the frank, which is paid for, do not communicate by FAX or e-mail or any of the other gadgets.

We cannot have it both ways. In fact, the Post Office was criticized for not becoming more competitive. Well, they have gone and

done some of that. I am not sure they have done enough of it. I

am not worried about the private sector. We have extraordinary

privatized services and, of course, they don’t have the same burden

of keeping the cost of the average letter down the way we insist,

justifiably so, that the Postal Service do.

I do want to raise one concern that I have. There is a pejorative

term that has come into our language, ‘‘going postal.’’ This comes

from the fact that there have been a fair number of violent incidents involving Postal workers.

The question has been raised over and over again about the

stress that is associated with mechanization and automation of

services and perhaps with improved management that forces workers into patterns that are more rigid than before.

28

I am very concerned with how labor relations are handled with

the increasing pressure on the Post Office to deliver mail at lower

costs and compete with the private sector.

I went out with a Postal worker here in the District of Columbia.

I asked the postmaster to just give me a worker to go with at random. I was astounded by what I saw. He was often the only person

that residents saw. He had an extraordinary relationship with his

neighborhood. It was in Adams Morgan. He climbed steps over and

over again. He must have been in the best shape.

I want to learn more today about how management is coping

with its cost problems and I want to learn more today about how

management is coping with its labor management problems.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. I thank the gentlelady.

Mr. Walker, I think we are ready now to have you sworn.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. BURTON. I assume you have an opening statement.

STATEMENT OF DAVID M. WALKER, COMPTROLLER GENERAL

OF THE UNITED STATES, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE,

ACCOMPANIED BY BERNARD UNGAR, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL

INFRASTRUCTURE TEAM, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. WALKER. I do have an opening statement. As you have already noted, the entire statement, I know, will be in the record. If

I could summarize it now, I would appreciate it.

I am pleased to be here today to participate in this committee’s

hearing on the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Service plays a vital

role in our economy. It links people together and helps to bridge

the growing digital divide.

Overall, the Service, however, faces major challenges that collectively call for a structural transformation in order for it to remain

viable in the 21st century.

The last major reform of the Postal Service occurred in 1970. The

world has changed fundamentally since 1970. It will change even

more in the coming 31 years.

The Service’s projected financial losses have increased significantly during the past 4 months. Over the past 2 years we have

raised concerns about a range of financial, operational and human

capital challenges that threaten the Postal Service’s ability to continue to provide affordable, high quality and universal postal service on a self-financing basis.

Moreover, the Service’s financial outlook has worsened more

quickly than expected. It is not clear how the Service will address

its mounting financial difficulties and other challenges. These challenges include, as chart one will show, which is also slide one in

your packet: The Service’s net income has declined over the past

5 years. The Service currently projects a fiscal 2001 deficit of between $2 billion and $3 billion, up from a projected loss of $480

million just 4 months ago.

It is my understanding that the two primary reasons for the

change in the projection were No. 1, a postal rate increase that was

$800 million lower than they expected to get, and No. 2, a decline

in the economy and the resulting effect on volume.

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In my opinion, Mr. Chairman, as the Social Security and Medicare trustees do, and I was a trustee of Social Security and Medicare for 5 years, in general I think it is not a good idea to project

rate increases unless you know for a fact that they are going to

occur.

Therefore, I think one of the reasons for the variance is because

there was a projected rate increase that in fact had not been approved. That is $800 million. That is a lot of money.

Further, in fiscal 2002, the Postal Service estimates that its deficit will be in the $2.5 to $3.5 billion range, assuming no further

rate increases.

If I can refer you now to chart two, costs have been growing at

a faster rate than revenues over recent years.

Now we will go to chart three, which is figure five, I believe. The

Service has experienced a net increase in outstanding debt at the

end of each fiscal year since 1997. Its total outstanding debt

reached $9.3 billion at the end of fiscal year 2000. Service official expects that they could reach the $15 billion statutory debt limit by the end of fiscal year 2002, assuming no additional increases in postal rates. In addition, the Service does not

have a plan to reduce its debt burden. Depending on future events,

the Service may face a cash shortage in fiscal years 2002 or 2003.

The next chart, which would be slide No. 6, I believe, shows the

Service faces increasing competition from both domestic and foreign-based entities. It also expects certain electronic diversion of

existing mail will be caused by greater use of the Internet that will

cause a substantial decline in first class mail volume in the next

decade, and thus place the Service under, in its own words, ‘‘extreme financial pressure.’’ Although the Service has plans to cut its costs by $2.5 billion by

2003 through increasing productivity and improving human capital

programs, it has historically had great difficulty in achieving its

planned outcome.

The Service has also had periodic conflicts with some of its key

stakeholders, including the postal unions and the Postal Rate Commission. We have noted longstanding labor-management relations

problems that have hindered improvement efforts, including the

fact that three major labor agreements expired in November 2000,

which collectively cover over a half a million of the Postal Service’s

work force.

In addition, the Postal Service and the Postal Rate Commission

have had longstanding disagreements concerning pricing decisions,

and they continue. The Service is subject to statutory and other restrictions that seem to limit its ability to transform itself.

A lot of these provisions were put in place in the last reform in

the 1970’s and some preexist that.

Finally, two key leadership positions need to be filled related to

critical postal operations and rate setting, namely the Postmaster

General. Postmaster General Henderson has announced that he

will be leaving next month. In addition, former Chairman Ed

Gleiman is no longer chairman. He resigned recently.

Based upon all this information, Mr. Chairman, we believe that

the Service’s deteriorating financial situation and the contributing

structural challenges call for prompt aggressive action, particularly

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in the area of cutting costs and improving productivity, including

considering existing legislative provisions that serve to limit the

ability of the Postal Service to transform itself.

Accordingly, we are adding the Postal Service’s transformation

efforts to our high-risk list, effective immediately, so that we and

others can focus on its financial, operational, and human capital

challenges before the situation reaches truly crisis proportions

where the options for action may be more limited.

Let me emphasize, we are not putting the entire Postal Service

on our high-risk list. Management and employees at the Postal

Service do some things right, and in fact on-time delivery has improved significantly over the last several years.

Rather, we are focusing on the challenges associated with the

transformation effort and the related obstacles that must be addressed in order to enable the Postal Service to truly transform

itself for the 21st century.

In our view, we believe that the following actions need to be

taken. First, the Postal Service should develop a comprehensive

plan in conjunction with Congress and its other key stakeholders,

such as the postal unions and management associations, customers, and the Postal Rate Commission, that would identify the

administrative and legislative actions needed to address the Service’s financial, operational and human capital challenges and that

would establish a timeframe and specify key milestones for achieving desired results.

Second, the Service should provide summary financial reports to

the Congress and the public on a quarterly basis. These reports

should present sufficiently detailed information for the stakeholders to understand the Service’s current and future projected financial condition and how its outlook may have changed since the previous quarter and its progress toward achieving the desired results

specified in its comprehensive plan.

Last, but certainly not least, GAO will work with the Congress

and the Service to identify and analyze possible improvement options and will continue to analyze and report to the Congress on

the Service’s ongoing financial condition.

In consultation with other postal stakeholders, including the

Postal Service Office of the Inspector General, postal unions and

management associations, the Postal Rate Commission and customers, GAO will review the Service’s financial results and future

outlook, progress in cost-cutting and productivity efforts, other

countries’ experiences in dealing with related challenges and the

options for addressing the Service’s short-term and long-range challenges.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my prepared remarks. I would be

more than happy to answer any questions that you or any other

members of the committee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Walker follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, General Walker.

You reported just a moment ago that the Postal Service is being

added to the GAO’s high-risk list. I have a couple of questions on

that. Maybe I will just give them all to you at once and you can

answer them collectively.

What factors do you take into consideration when determining an

agency or program should be placed on the high-risk list? That is

No. 1.

Is it unusual for an agency or program to be added to the highrisk list during a congressional session? I mean immediately. We

didn’t know about this until just recently and then, boom, all of a

sudden it just hit us.

Third, what would it take for the Postal Service to be removed

from the high-risk list? If you can start off with that question, I

would appreciate it.

Mr. WALKER. I would be happy to, Mr. Chairman. They are all

excellent questions.

First, what are the factors that we consider? Last year, in calendar 2000, we published for notice and comment the factors that

we use in determining when a function or program is deemed to

be high risk, and No. 2, what it takes to get off.

Some of the factors that are relevant for considering when a program goes on include: Is the program of national significance? I

think we can all agree that the Postal Service has a program that

is of national significance.

Does the challenge relate to a key management function that

deals with its performance and accountability? Does the risk relate

to a systemic or structural problem? Does it involve $1 billion or

more of taxpayer funds?

Have there been corrective measures identified? What is the

progress toward addressing those? Based upon applying these criteria in our professional and independent judgment, we believe

that the Postal Service’s transformation effort meets these criteria.

In other words, that transformation effort is at high risk; not the

entire Postal Service.

There are several significant subsequent events that have occurred since we made our determination about the January 2001

list. We made that determination in early November 2000, in order

to finalize it and to publish it in January 2001.

The significant subsequent events, for example, have been a significant deterioration in the projected financial condition of the

Postal Service, escalating from an approximate $480 million anticipated loss for this year to $2 to $3 billion and further escalating

in the future.

Second, mounting debt without a debt repayment plan.

Third, a continued conflict over rate setting.

Fourth, key leadership voids. The Postmaster General announced

that he was not going to seek reappointment and the chairman of

the Postal Rate Commission resigned during this period of time.

In addition, three major labor agreements have expired and are

now set for binding arbitration, covering over half of the Postal

Service’s work force.

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Finally, last but certainly not least, the Board itself has stated

that it is at serious risk of not being able to achieve its statutory

mission.

Mr. Chairman, we could have waited on the 2-year cycle, but I

think if there had been subsequent events and the facts dictate

that it meets our high risk criteria, if it is a important enough program, and I would argue the Postal Service transformation effort

is important, and the Postal Service clearly is, then I think we

have a responsibility to act.

In these times, we can’t necessarily wait 2 years before we end

up adding critical areas to the high-risk list.

As far as what it will take to get off, Mr. Chairman, which I

think was your third question, there must be a plan, a specifically

identified plan dealing with both operational as well as legislative

challenges, to try to address these issues. There must be commitment on behalf of the parties to do it. It must be implemented to

some extent and we must see some meaningful results. We must

be convinced that it is on a sustainable path to deal with some of

the major structural problems in order to get it off the list.

I might add that there is an analogous situation, and it may not

sound analogous, but I think there is an analogous situation that

occurred earlier in the 1990’s. I used to be head of the Pension

Benefit Guarantee Corp. PBGC is a government corporation that is

intended to be self-financing, that was experiencing a deteriorating

financial condition and had certain operational problems as well as

certain legislative challenges.

GAO put it on its high-risk list, the single insurance program in

the early 1990’s. Through a combination of management actions

and legislative actions, it was removed from the list several years

later.

I think it is a decent analogy, even though that program was in

a totally different line of business.

Mr. BURTON. Let me ask one more question real quickly. I think

you alluded to the fact that the Postal Service will reach the statutory borrowing limit of $15 billion sometime in the next year or

two. What will that mean for Postal operations when they reach

that limit? Will the Postal Service run out of cash?

Mr. WALKER. Well, it will then depend on what the projected

cash-flows are. Right now the Service is using this borrowing authority for two things, for modernization, for construction activities,

as well as to cover operating losses, any cash-flow problems from

operations. By law, as you know, the service can only borrow $2

billion a year for construction and improvement and only $1 billion

a year to cover negative cash-flows associated with operations.

I think it would be better to ask the Service what projects its

cash-flows to be in 2003. But they are deteriorating and we expect

right now, if the Service doesn’t get a postal rate increase, that it

could hit the debt limit in 2002.

By the way, the answer is not simply to raise rates. It is a more

fundamental, structural issue that we need to look at here, because

you could simply raise rates and deal with the short-term problem.

That is dealing with the symptom rather than dealing with the disease. We need to deal with the disease, I think.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Davis.

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Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Walker, you indicated that if the Service is to reach a breakeven point, in all probability, that is going to occur through a rate

increase, although you have indicated that you would suggest or

hope that would be the last thing that would happen or that every

effort should be made to minimize that occurrence.

You also indicated that one of the ways of generating new revenue or additional revenue is through services and products. But we

note that the Postal Service has had a difficult time generating real

money with services and products.

Given those facts, do you see any way other than perhaps

through a rate increase that the situation can be reversed?

Mr. WALKER. I think we need to look at a range of options. I

think we need to look at opportunities for cutting costs, for enhancing productivity. I think that the Congress needs to consider looking both on the rate-setting side as well as some of the restrictions

that are imposed on the Postal Service with regard to automatically going to binding arbitration and some of the issues that affect

its cost structure.

What you can do to provide reasonable flexibility to the Postal

Service to allow it to try to transform itself, working with its stakeholders while providing appropriate accountability for results.

I think there are opportunities for economies, for cost cutting, for

productivity improvement. But at the same point in time, I think

there are some structural impediments that the Service faces that

are going to have to be addressed in order to try to enable it to pursue certain things.

You are right, also, Mr. Davis that historically, at least based on

our experience, many of the efforts that the Postal Service has

made to try to get into different products and services have not resulted in additional margin. They have not resulted in helping the

situation and in some situations have hurt.

Mr. DAVIS. You know that in almost any business situation when

we start talking about how to come out of a dilemma, immediately

we think of cutting costs, that is reducing the requirements for operating.

Do you think we can cut costs and at the same time continue to

provide the high quality of service that we have heard some Members allude to that they have been able to receive and benefit from?

Mr. WALKER. Well, clearly, the Postal Service, I think, has done

a good job. It has improved its on-time delivery over the past several years. Customer service, in general, customer satisfaction

rates have generally been positive and generally have been moving

in the right direction, if you will.

So, I think we want to try to minimize postal rate increases and

maintain quality and reliability of the Service. I do think, however,

that we need to look at more market-oriented approaches to things

like rate setting, considering price elasticity a lot more than has

been the case.

In other words, obviously, to the extent that you end up raising

rates on certain types of postage, in some cases it could have a very

serious effect on the volume and in other cases it won’t have a serious adverse effect on the volume.

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On the other hand, if you look at the cost side, I think we also

have to look at what benchmark is being used to set labor wage

rates. What is the benchmark that is being used to determine that

those rates are fair? To what extent is it based on skills, knowledge

and performance? To what extent is it not based on those factors?

I think we also have to look at things compared to other countries and other systems because everything in the world is relevant. We have to learn from them. What are some of the things

that they did in order to try to minimize costs while maintaining

reliable service? We are doing some work in that area. I think it

can help this committee tremendously in trying to deal with some

of these issues.

Mr. DAVIS. Finally, if I could, why do you think the Service has

had not as much success as desirable in generating large amounts

of revenue with its new products or services?

Mr. WALKER. I don’t know how much market testing there has

been. You might want to ask the Postmaster General that question.

But it is not clear to me that there has been a significant amount

of concept testing, market testing in advance of some of these products and services that normally you would see in the private sector,

that would occur.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am just wondering if sometimes we are not really whistling in the wind in

terms of reaching for what is not there when we try to come up

with other approaches and other ways.

Thank you very much.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. McHugh. We will continue until we get to the

5-minute mark and then we will recess for the vote.

Mr. MCHUGH. Mr. Walker, thank you for being here. Again, I appreciate the work and the effort that GAO has provided on this

very important issue, certainly in the past 6 years that I have been

working on it and that effort continues today.

Let me ask you a general question with respect to all these dire

predictions. I have read your testimony and I understand you are

currently analyzing them in-depth. But have you seen anything in

your studies thus far that would suggest to you that the $2 to $3

billion estimate the Postal Service is currently projecting is in any

way unreasonable or likely far too high?

Mr. WALKER. We are still analyzing the projection. I can’t draw

a conclusion at this point in time. Nothing has come to our attention that I am aware of that would cause us to say that it is unreasonable. It is also based on no increase in postal rates as well.

The biggest uncertainty associated with that projection is frankly, the Postal Service doesn’t know and frankly nobody in America

knows how soft the economy is going to get and how long it is going

to last. That is probably the biggest uncertainty that exists.

Mr. MCHUGH. I appreciate that. Obviously, you have said here

many times that certainly one of the major challenges of many, and

one of the more frustrating things about this problem, is that it is

so multi-faceted. Some of my colleagues like to talk about productivity. Others like to talk about confining unnecessary, in their

view, competition, etc.

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But clearly one of the major problems is the fact that the structure, as you call it, the need for structural reform, is one that has

been in place for 30 years. Would you agree with that?

Mr. WALKER. That is correct. I mean, the world is fundamentally

different than it was 30 years ago. The type of competition that the

Postal Service is facing is very different. There are several foreign

countries that have postal services offices on our soil. They are

starting out at first to be able to get some of the international bulk

market.

There is nothing to preclude them from trying to be able to cherry pick some of the domestic market through contracting type activities, etc. I think we have to keep that in mind.

It is just a whole new ballgame. The other thing is that on the

productivity front there has been, it is my understanding through

speaking with my very capable staff, that there has been only

about an 11 percent productivity increase since the early 1970’s in

the Postal Service.

Now, to its credit, last year I think the Service had about a 2.4

or 2.5 percent increase, which is maybe the best year ever and

clearly one of the better years. But their service’s ability to sustain

productivity increases over time has not been good in the past and

obviously it is something we hope can happen in the future to keep

down prices.

Mr. MCHUGH. Yes, I believe it is the largest since 1993, and I

think that is a tribute to the current Postmaster General. It is a

little difficult to get too terribly productive in a $60 billion a year

industry when 76 or 80 percent of your costs are driven by the employees.

You do have a very aggressive automation underway. Mr. Otter mentioned some shortfall figures. They did spend over $5 billion;

I think most of us agree that is a lot of money, even on Capital

Hill. But when the core of your service is to walk that individual

to every household in America, unless you give them roller blades,

productivity is a little hard to achieve, I would think.

Let me just finish up with a couple of comments. I think, my colleagues, we have to remember that when we get caught up—and

I am a Republican and I am proud of that fact, we have to remember the phrase ‘‘competing against the private sector.’’ We should

always pause and ask ourselves, who is competing against whom.

I think our constituents, when they go to the Postal Service want

to be able to buy certain services and certain products like envelopes and boxes and want to be able to mail a box at the Postal

Service and most of us would expect them to do that.

There are a number of great delivery companies in the private

sector. I think we have to be cognizant and sensitive to their positions as well. But the fact of the matter is that we have allowed

the Postal Service one door to exit their current conundrum. Then

we sit around and criticize them for walking out the door. Coffee

cups and novelty tee shirts are probably not the best idea. I think

it was a show of desperation by the Postal Service to try to generate revenues. Thankfully, they have ended that. We do have to

level the playing field.

Our bill required taxes on their competitive products and gave

increased oversight to the PRC. Subpoena power required them to

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operate under Anti-Trust Provisions. There were those who were

deeply concerned about the recent FedEx-USPS partnership and

such.

But at the end of the day, the reality is that they are operating

in a 30-year old paradigm that doesn’t work any more. It doesn’t

work for either the Postal Service, those folks who depend upon

them, or those folks who choose very effectively to compete against

them.

When you have a Postal Service that can’t, under law, put itself

up for winning the Federal Government contract for overnight-urgent mail, I think that suggests that we have to do some things

that will allow them to operate differently and require them to operate differently. I hope we can come to that agreement.

Mr. Chairman, again, thank you for your leadership.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. McHugh. We are going to rely on

your research and previous commitment as subcommittee chairman

on this legislation that we are going to be working on.

Mr. MCHUGH. You are too good to me, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Chairman, we only have about 8 minutes to

vote. Do you mind?

Mr. BURTON. No. If you like we will be glad to recess and you

can speak when we come back.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I appreciate that.

Mr. BURTON. We will stand in recess. We have two votes on the

floor. I apologize. This is one of the problems we have to deal with

in the legislative process. We will be back in 20 or 25 minutes.

We stand in recess until the fall of the gavel.

[Recess.]

Mr. BURTON. General Walker, over the years the General Accounting Office has done considerable work on the Postal Service’s

finances and its delivery performance. To what extent will the

Postal Service’s current financial situation impact the delivery of

the mail? Do you have an answer to that?

Mr. WALKER. There does not appear to be an immediate threat

in any way to the Postal Service’s ability to continue to deliver the

mail. The simple fact of the matter is that while it is losing money,

it has lost money before and it still has borrowing authority.

But the fact of the matter is that we project, at least based on

the information we have been given so far from the Postal Service,

that the financial situation will become particularly critical at the

end of 2002.

What we think is important is to recognize that we need to deal

with the structural problem here. Yes, we need to improve productivity. Yes, we need to cut costs. Yes, we need to try to minimize

rate increases.

But in order to try to accomplish all of those objectives, it is not

only certain management actions that are going to have be taken.

Certain legislative reforms are going to have to be necessary as

well.

Mr. BURTON. Let me ask you this question and then, Mr.

Cummings, I think you were next. I apologize. I will yield to you.

Seventy-five to eighty percent of the total costs of the Postal

Service are personnel. We have tried over the years to encourage

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automation. I think they have taken steps to use new technologies

and automation to speed up delivery service.

It seems that with the new technologies that we have, there

could be more use of automation and technology. Without disrupting the personnel that works for the Postal Service, it seems to me,

and maybe you have done some research on this, that through attrition, through people retiring, through people leaving the Postal

Service, I don’t know what the figures are per year, if you can’t

give me that, maybe the Postal Service can, let us say that out of

900,000 employees there are 60,000 that leave in a year, maybe

even more than that.

It seems that there could be an incremental change from heavy

use of personnel for certain delivery processes to a heavier reliance

on automation and without firing people or laying people off, just

through attrition and retirements and a transfer to automation we

could make the kind of economies that we see in the auto industry.

In the auto industry, I think they did it with layoffs. I am not

saying we should do that because I think we have great people in

the Postal Service and through attrition you could do that. But

they went to robotics, instead of having people putting screws and

bolts in on the assembly line.

Why can’t that be done in an orderly fashion and reduce costs?

If it can be done, why isn’t it being done?

Mr. WALKER. Well, clearly technology is part of the answer, additional use of technology. It is my understanding that the Postal

Service has ended up doing more in the area of technology with regard to first-class mail, to try to automate more of that type of activity.

But you properly point out that it costs money in order to be able

to design and implement the new technology. Ultimately, if you are

going to achieve the productivity increase and reduce overall costs,

it has to come from some place.

You properly point out, Mr. Chairman, 75 to 80 percent of the

costs of the Postal Service deals are people costs. Therefore, ultimately you are going to need to get that cost down.

What needs to happen is an integrated plan that focuses on desired outcomes, that focuses technology investments along with

strategic work force planning so as much as possible you can do

what you just said? Based upon attrition, you can end up hopefully

being able to save money through attrition, and use technology to

increase productivity.

I don’t know that plan exists, quite frankly, Mr. Chairman. That

is something you ought to ask the Postal Service.

Mr. BURTON. We will address that to the Postal people and the

Postmaster General when we get a chance.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Comptroller General, I just want to thank you for your testimony. It has been very enlightening, to say the least. You know,

as I listen to you, you made a number of comments which led me

to believe, you know, I kept saying, is this operation run like a corporation? Because it seems to me if it were truly run like a corporation, either it would be out of business or it would be doing

pretty good.

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In other words, you talked about a number of the issues and it

seems as if, if there were certain key folks in certain positions that

had certain responsibilities you wouldn’t have things such as these

nontraditional efforts to raise money and things of that nature.

In other words, it seems to me that you would have methods by

which you could control what you are doing and, at the same time,

change as society changes and as technology changes. It seems like

something is out of kilter there.

Mr. WALKER. The Postal Service has a lot more restrictions

placed on it, both on the rate-setting side or the revenue side, and

on the labor side than would exist in the private sector.

For example, if you take on the rate side, there are a number of

factors that the Postal Rate Commission can consider, and in fact

that it does consider, in setting rates. But a lot of it is driven by

cost and the desire to minimize overall rates, which we all can

agree to.

In the private sector, I know you would see a lot more market

oriented consideration in determining what you are going to end up

charging for particular classes of mail. You would see a lot more

consideration on what the likely rate increase would have on volume, the elasticity issue.

You would try to minimize overall rate increases, but what you

would also see is you would see a circumstance where the rate increases would be geared more toward areas where there is less

competition and where it is less likely to have an adverse effect on

volume, which obviously could cut revenues.

On the labor side, clearly collective bargaining is very important.

We want to support collective bargaining. You want to have cooperative labor-management relations. That hasn’t always been the

case at the Postal Service and other entities as well.

You generally don’t find circumstances in the private sector

where statutorily you are required to go to binding arbitration if

the parties reach an impasse.

Take the FAA, the Air Traffic Controllers, that obviously is a

vital function for the public, just as postal workers provide a vital

function for this country for reasons that I articulated. But the

FAA, Air Traffic Controllers don’t have binding arbitration if they

reach an impasse.

Now, part of the problem is, if you are not going to do that, if

you go through mediation, where is it going to go? In the case of

the FAA it comes to the Congress. That is problematic, too.

So, I think what we need to do, Mr. Cummings, is there needs

to be a plan that recognizes we have to try to minimize costs, we

have to try to increase productivity, we have to try to minimize

rate increases and there are things that can and should be done

administratively within the context of current law.

I also think we have to look at what type of legislative reforms

might be necessary, given the passage of 31 years and a fundamentally different economy to try to look at some of the framework and

see if that framework might have to be modified in light of changes

in the economy and in light of increasing competition.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I have just one other question. Let us assume

you had maximum cooperation from the Congress and you were

able to do the things that you think you need to get done to accomVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\75418.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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plish what you want to accomplish here, what kind of timetable are

you talking about in turning it around so that you are operating

in the black? Not you, but I mean the Postal Service.

Mr. WALKER. The Postal Service, yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. You are such an expert, you sound like you need

to be in the Postal Service.

Mr. WALKER. I have already got a good job, Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I thought maybe you were looking for a night

job.

Mr. WALKER. I have a night job already, too. Last week Mr. Horn

tried to make me chief operating officer of the U.S. Government.

I told him I had a good day job and a night job, I might add.

But in any event, I do believe, as we say in our testimony, that

it is incumbent upon the Board and management to come forth

with a proposal. But I think we need to have a clean sheet of paper

here.

I don’t think we can necessarily assume that the past problems

or obstacles that have existed, including relevant political considerations, I think we have to at least put those options on the table.

I think we have to talk about them because ultimately we have to

make this situation more relevant for the 21st century.

We are not going to be able to get around that. It is just a matter

of when we are going to come to that realization and when we are

going to act on it.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Cummings.

Mr. Clay.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, at this time

I would also like to request unanimous consent to submit my opening statement for the record.

Mr. BURTON. Without objection.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Walker, thank you today for your testimony, also.

You have several questions I would like to go through with you.

What steps can the Postal Service take to ensure that their e-commerce activities will result in a positive return on investment and

how long can the Postal Service pursue these initiatives if they

don’t make money.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

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Mr. WALKER. Mr. Clay, I would be happy to provide something

for the record on that but I can’t answer it right here at this time.

Mr. CLAY. Do you know how much money they are losing on

these activities?

Mr. WALKER. On the e-commerce activities, I don’t. We recently

received some information. I think one of the things that has to

happen in general in government, including the Postal Service, is

to move more toward activity-based costing where we have more

information with regard to types of products and services and functions. Postal has more than most, but not enough.

Mr. CLAY. Along those same lines, how much money is the Postal

Service counting on from its new products and services?

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Clay, I would respectfully suggest that they

would be in a better position to answer that than I would.

Mr. CLAY. OK. Last September, GAO made several recommendations to address a number of inconsistencies and problems it found

with information the Postal Service provided on its e-commerce activities. What action has the Postal Service taken to respond to

GAO’s recommendations?

Mr. WALKER. If it is all right, Mr. Chairman, I would like Bernie

Ungar to come up who I think held his hand up earlier. He leads

our work in the Postal area. He might be able to address it.

Mr. UNGAR. Mr. Cummings, as you indicated, we did make three

recommendations to the Postal Service. I think one of the most important ones was for the Postal Service to get a better handle on

its revenues and expenses from its e-commerce products.

The Postal Service did agree with all of our recommendations,

that one in particular. It has taken action to implement a new system to collect and allocate costs and report revenue.

We just got information recently from the Postal Service, so we

have not had a chance to assess it yet. But we are certainly pleased

that the Service took our recommendations to heart.

Mr. CLAY. So, do you think they will make money off of their activities?

Mr. UNGAR. We are still analyzing that. The information to date

would suggest that the Service is still having problems making

money, but again, we are in the early stages at this point.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Walker, the Postal Service was recently chastised

for approving over $200 million in bonuses for managers. How typical is this sort of behavior when every dollar is needed to cover necessary and critical expenses?

Mr. WALKER. I am not intimately familiar with the bonus system

that the Postal Service has. I do, however, know that it is based

on somewhat of a balanced scorecard approach. It has specific

measures that are set in advance and include results, financial performance, on-time performance, and certain employee-related

issues as well.

In the private sector generally you would find that it is important to have a well-defined plan that has balanced measures, that

considers profitability but also considers other factors like productivity improvement, which I know there is a factor at the Postal

Service.

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We would be happy to take a look at it, if you like, Mr. Clay, but

it is my understanding that it is a plan that has existed for some

time.

It is not unusual to see bonuses paid in the private sector when

a company is losing money, because it depends on whether it is intended to be a profit-sharing arrangement or whether or not the

bonus structure is based upon other measures that, even though

they may not result in immediate profit, may end up resulting in

positive outcomes over time.

But without reviewing the exact program, it would be tough for

me to tell where I think that stacks up.

Mr. CLAY. So, irrespective of the $3 billion deficit that is being

projected, it is OK to pay the bonuses. Is that what you are saying?

Mr. WALKER. What I am saying is merely because they are paying bonuses doesn’t tell me that there is a problem. What I would

want to do is to look at what is the nature of the bonus program.

How is it set up? What are the key measures? How well are they

defined? How reliable is the information and how do these bonuses

compare to other comparable entities, if you will.

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Walker, one final question. The Postal Service has

reported that its worker compensation expenses are increasing substantially and are difficult to control. Why are these costs increasing so dramatically and what efforts are underway to bring them

under control?

Mr. WALKER. I think the Postal Service would be in the best position to answer that, but I will tell you this: We do have concerns

about this issue. We do have concern about the so-called ‘‘lost days’’ rate. How many lost days does the Postal Service have on average

per worker per year?

As you probably know, Mr. Clay, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill

is a big proponent of focusing on these issues, as I am. This was

one of his lead efforts when he was chairman and chief executive

officer of Alcoa.

I think that is an area that clearly has to be focused on to a

greater extent. It also could be a combination of what has occurred

over years when there hasn’t been as positive labor-management

relations and possibly some of the related stress factors.

Bernie.

Mr. UNGAR. Last year one of the major reasons for the increase

was in effect a speed-up by the Department of Labor in processing

claims. We also have just begun work, at the request of Mr. Horn,

to look at the Workers’ Compensation Program. So, we are also trying to get a handle on what is actually causing those problems and

the increases and what can be done to prevent the increases.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Clay.

General Walker, thank you very much for being here. We really

appreciate it. We will probably be back in touch with you in the

future.

Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Postmaster General Henderson, would you come

forward? I understand you have an association with you who might

want to answer some questions as well. As always, we will swear

you in before you sit down.

[Witnesses sworn.]

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Mr. BURTON. Make no mistake about it; those Members who are

not here will be aware of everything that is said. There will be

some of these Members coming back. This is Wednesday and we

are going on a 2-week break, so there will probably be a lot of the

Members who are leaving.

This is very important and the gravity of the situation with the

Post Office will be conveyed not only to the Members of the committee who are not here right now, but to the leadership and the

White House. I intend to contact the White House because I am not

sure they are aware of the shortfall.

I was just informed, and maybe you can address this in your

opening remarks, General Henderson, that the shortfall of $2 to $3

billion may be under-estimated. It could be as high as $4 to $5 billion from what I have been told. So, if you could address that in

your opening remarks, I would really appreciate it.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM J. HENDERSON, POSTMASTER

GENERAL OF THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE

Mr. HENDERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very glad to

be here today to talk about the Postal Service. I am pleased that

after 30 years of working in the Postal Service next month I will

be leaving.

I want to thank you for your help in trying to push reform and

former Chairman McHugh’s help in trying to push reform. I think

that is critical to the future of the Postal Service.

I also want to thank the 800,000 employees across America who

work for the Postal Service for their outstanding customer satisfaction scores of 92 percent customer approval. That is the highest in

the Federal Government and also for their on-time service performance with externally measured first class mail, which is 93, and for

14 quarters has been 93 or better all across the Nation. That is excellent work that these employees do.

My disappointment of my tenure as a 10-year Postmaster General is the fact that we didn’t get postal reform. We have talked

about what is happening today for the last 4 or 5 years. We have

talked about the fact that there is going to be a decline in demand

for postal products 1 day and the Postal Service has to be given

tools to avert that.

I have been in Congress talking about this theme. Today, you are

seeing it as a reality. I will put up slide No. 1. I will just show you

something that drives Postal costs. It is something, Mr. Chairman,

that you mentioned earlier.

If you will look at that graph, you can see that the red line is

the cost per work here and the yellow line is the net income. There

is a direct correlation between cost per work year in the Postal

Service and net income.

If you take revenue per piece, which is the price of postage and

go back 30 years, you will see the price of revenue per piece tracks

identically to the cost per work year. So, there is the driver.

If you will go to slide No. 2, you will see that the yellow cylinders

are the actual growth and the red part is the planned growth. You

will see AP–5, 6 and 7, that is after the rate increase. You will see

that revenues are well below planned after the rate increase.

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If you will go to slide No. 3, the point of this slide is that over

the last 2 years we are processing 8 billion more pieces of mail, 3.1

more million deliveries with 20,000 fewer employees. So, you can

see the impact of automation on the Postal Service.

Finally, the last slide, this is a slide that explains exactly where we are today. The yellow line is where we projected the $480 million loss. You see the top line there. When we received the opinion

from the Postal Rate Commission, we adjusted that line to $1.3 billion, accounting for the $800 million that you mentioned in your

opening statement.

When we had actual performance in quarter one, which is the

green line, you will see that expectations for revenue were very

low. Now, we are projecting out between $2 and $3 billion right

there. But if the economy goes south even from where it is today,

postal mail volume is a surrogate for the economy, it could be

worse.

I just want to be candid with you. We can’t do much about that

revenue line as it stands today. We don’t have any tools, really to

effect the revenue. We just have to adjust our costs and our expenses. That is where you see some of what would be characterized

as more radical things being talked about.

We have to respond to lessening revenues. We talked about this

as being a major problem in the reform hearings that former Chairman McHugh conducted. We talked about the fact that today it

happens to be the economy. Tomorrow it could be bills and payments, the $17 billion being taken away from the Postal Service.

It has to have tools to adjust. Without those tools, unfortunately,

rate increases come along.

The Postal Service, as a matter of policy, doesn’t like raising

rates. We have some options that we are going to look at for this

upcoming talked about rate case.

But nonetheless, the problem exists; the problem of declining revenues is a fact in today’s economy. I know you will understand this

because you have been a part of that discussion.

That is where we are today, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Henderson follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. I know how hard you have worked trying to get

postal reform through. A number of us in the Congress have been

supportive of what you wanted. We have not always been able to

have the kind of bipartisan support for one reason or another. I am

not blaming Democrats or Republicans. I am just saying it wasn’t

there.

Congressman Waxman and I think Congressman Davis, as well

as the Republican Congressmen, I think are more committed today

to reform. We are a little bit late, but hopefully we can get something done.

But I wanted to point out to you something that I just saw today.

Have you seen one of these?

Mr. HENDERSON. What is it?

Mr. BURTON. It is a device that you can e-mail from anywhere

in the world. You can just carry this with you and if you want to

send a message to your wife or your girlfriend.

Mr. BARR. Mr. Chairman, I would like the record to reflect that

I do not use that to send messages to my girlfriend, only official

duty.

Mr. BURTON. I am sure you don’t.

Mr. BARR. Only official duty.

Mr. BURTON. E-mails are easily traceable any more, as I know.

Mr. BARR. That is precisely the point.

Mr. BARR. In any event, with this kind of technology, and I will

be expressing this to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, with

that kind of technology the Postal Service is definitely in a very

competitive area.

The thing that troubles me, and maybe you can explain this a

little bit; you are talking about losing some market share now. You

are talking about declining revenues probably in part because of

the technology.

But with these kind of technologies, not only e-mails, but with

faxes, if they raise postal rates, let us say another 2 cents a letter

for first class mail or 4 cents or whatever they decide to do, is it

not logical to assume that more people will be sending e-mails,

which is much less costly, than to just continue to buy stamps just

because of the cost?

Won’t more businesses start doing that?

Mr. HENDERSON. I think the general trend, regardless of the

rates for postage, is going to be to use more electronic services as

opposed to hard copy. There is though, the very effective ad mail,

advertising mail. There is a lot of technology around that. That is

going to grow remarkably, I think. Because they can still reach

your mailbox. They have a lot of data about you. It has high privacy to it. It has terrific prospects for the future.

For packages, we still are the cheapest available residential pickup and delivery organization in the United States. So, I think there

are opportunities there. The elasticities based on pricing, they are

sensitive.

If you look back at every rate case, all except for the one that

we raised rates across the board 10.3 percent, volume has declined

before it came back. So, there is a concern there about that.

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Mr. BURTON. My assistant was just pointing out that standard

e-mail is 17 cents and it is much less profitable than the first class

mail.

Mr. HENDERSON. Yes, in terms of total profit, not margin, but in

terms of total moneys we get from it. Yes, that is one of the phenomena we are having right now, that we are trading what was

our growth product, first class mail, 34 cents, for 17 cents for

standard at standard A. So, we are delivering mail to your mailbox

that is generating a lot less revenue for us. That is a big concern.

Mr. BURTON. Well, if you raised the rates on that class of mail

as well as first class mail, won’t that cause a potential decline in

that revenue source as well?

Mr. HENDERSON. That is right. There is a potential decline. But

that is the only tool, absent rate reform; I mean that is the only

tool that the Governors have to ensure the fiduciary responsibility

that they have been entrusted with by the President. That is the

one tool they have.

We can cost-cut our way. We can close, you know, if you look at

Post Offices, there are opportunities there. 26,000 of the smallest

Post Offices in the United States, it takes over $2 to take in $1.

You have some places like Cape Cod where you have seven townships and 53 Post Offices.

So, there are some infrastructure inefficiencies.

Mr. BURTON. But those are stopgap measures, are they not?

Mr. HENDERSON. That is right.

Mr. BURTON. I mean that is a one-time thing. You might save $1 billion in 1 year or maybe $1.5 billion. But the problem is going to

continue and once you have eliminated that problem, you are still

going to have the revenue drain you are talking about.

Mr. HENDERSON. That is right. You have to have reform.

Mr. BURTON. We are trying to figure out how to put together a

bipartisan package. You know, the Postal Reform bill, H.R. 22,

didn’t get the support that it needed for a number of reasons. It

should have, but it didn’t. So, we are going to try to come up with

a different approach.

I want to ask one other question and that is, we were talking

about automation and new technologies helping replace the huge

amount of revenue that is paid for personnel. What I was suggesting earlier is that the 75 to 80 percent of the costs are personnel

cost, personnel-related, retirement benefits, health benefits, as well

as salaries.

If you had everything the way you wanted it, if everything tomorrow could be changed the way you wanted it, could we, through

retirements and normal attrition, transfer to a more automated

system so we would still have the Postal delivery system, but

through a more automated system as far as handling the mail is

concerned that would be able to generate enough savings so that

we would not have to have these Postal rate increases?

Mr. HENDERSON. It depends on what the outcome of binding arbitration is on your remaining workers. We have a huge effort underway for automation. In fact, if you look at letter mail, mail processing costs, that are where the focus has been, with the billions of

dollars. You will see that the actual costs are declining in that

area.

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But if you are going to get wage increases of 4, 5 or 6 percent

annually and keep doing that, it is just like going from a push

mower to a riding mower but paying three times as much money.

You are not netting out on the bottom line. So, you have to get a

handle on your work hour costs.

Mr. BURTON. So you are suggesting what in the area of binding

arbitration?

Mr. HENDERSON. Well, I think that is right ought to be an alternative to binding arbitration.

Mr. BURTON. Such as?

Mr. HENDERSON. Well, there is the Railway Labor Act. You could

think up a new way of settling disputes. I think that the voice of

the customer needs to be heard in the outcome of a labor dispute

and not just an arbitrator saying, hey, I am cutting the baby 50– 50 or I am going to give them the average wage increase across

America.

I think that process needs to be re-examined and relooked at. I

think labor’s voice needs to be heard. I am not knocking collective

bargaining. I think collective bargaining is important. I am just

trying to figure out a new way to resolve the dispute process that

doesn’t result in these extraordinary work hour increases that

drive rates.

Mr. BURTON. Have you discussed with the labor leaders in the

Postal Service the problem that they are facing with alternative

sources of correspondence and how that will affect them if that is

right isn’t some kind of change in the binding arbitration?

Mr. HENDERSON. Well, I have talked with them about the future.

Mr. BURTON. I mean being priced out of the market place. We

have seen in industries like the auto industry where many companies are going offshore. Well, you are not going to go off-shore, well,

you might even go off-shore with some of the competition that is

coming into this country and opening up facilities, which was mentioned earlier.

But you are not going to go offshore to build a Post Office like

we do a car. But devices like the one that Congressman Barr has

are becoming more and more in vogue and people are using them.

If the labor force continues to price itself up, thus driving the

cost of the service up, it seems that more and more people will be

turning toward these alternative sources of communication.

Has anybody, yourself included, discussed, sat down and had

long discussions with the leaders of the unions about how this

would affect them?

Mr. HENDERSON. Yes. Our labor union leaders are well informed.

In fact, they write about it in their magazines, about the future of

the Postal Service and the need for Postal reform. I wouldn’t say

there is any agreement on an alternative to arbitration.

They are very concerned. I don’t mean to speak for them. But

they are very concerned about the notion of eliminating collective

bargaining. They are very much opposed to that. They wouldn’t

support anything like that and we’re not proposing that. But they

are concerned about the future and they do understand postal costs

intuitively.

Mr. BURTON. It seems like to me that that is kind of like the Gordian Knot that Alexander the Great had to face. I am not sure

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what the answer is, but it seems to me at some point that is going

to have to be one of the things we are going to have to sit down

and figure out.

We will try to talk to Mr. Gould and some of the other people

who are in charge of the various unions and see what their suggestions are on how to deal with that.

Your successor, whoever it happens to be, we will try to have

them in the loop, too, and get everybody together. As I said earlier

in my opening statement, it is extremely important that all segments of the Postal community, not only the Postal unions and the

people who run the Post Office and the Postal Rate Commission,

but also those who are involved in competition that would be effected by Postal reform legislation, need to sit down and try to

work out their differences.

Let me just ask a couple more questions here and then I will

yield to my colleagues here.

Do you agree with the decision by the Comptroller General to

add the Postal Service to its high-risk list right now?

Mr. HENDERSON. I agree with Mr. Walker in adding the transformation process. He didn’t add the Postal Service. He added the

Postal transformation process to his high-risk list. I think he

should. I think the efforts that we have had in Postal reform and

the fact that we have not been able to achieve reform and the conditions today and looking into the future, I think it warrants any

help we can get. I am open for anybody to get on this bandwagon.

Mr. BURTON. Do you have any other recommendations to make

to the Board of Governors or the new Postmaster General on what

kind of actions can be taken to get the Postal Service off of that

list and get things moving in the right direction?

Mr. HENDERSON. I think it is going to take a cooperative effort

between the management of the Postal Service, the Board of Governors, and the Congress, which plays a moving role, to come up

with a strong bipartisan piece of legislation that will help the Postal Service and that it moves through Congress with the support of

the American people.

We can’t do it by ourselves. We have shown that. We have also

some legal restrictions and thus far, until you have a problem it

doesn’t seem that people want sit back and take notice. I think if

they get rate increases in the summertime or a proposal, I think

people will really take notice, and they should.

Mr. BURTON. Let me just say that unfortunately, one of the

strengths and weaknesses of the legislative process is we usually

don’t respond until there is a shrill cry from some place. We should

be a little bit more far-sighted, but it seems like we aren’t.

Mr. McHugh down there has been working on this and talking

about this for a long time, as we have said. It has fallen on deaf

ears and now we are into almost a crisis situation.

Mr. Barr, do you have any questions right now?

Mr. BARR. I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Postmaster General, I appreciate your being here. Again, I

would like to tell you directly as I said earlier, and I mean this

very sincerely, I do think we have the best Postal Service anywhere

in the world.

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Having lived and worked in other countries, I am very familiar

with the fact that ours is better by far than almost any other and

certainly better than every other.

My experience, having been a temporary carrier during college,

is very first-hand knowledge. That continues to this day. I meet

frequently with postal employees and Postmasters in the Seventh

District of Georgia.

From time to time when we have a problem in management or

with employees, it is my experience that the Postal Service has always been very receptive to working with us and working with a

particular Post Office to straighten it out.

My concerns, like yours, are certainly not with the employees

themselves. They do an outstanding job under very difficult conditions sometimes.

I share the concerns of other Members of this committee and I

think, the general public, with some of the things we are seeing

and reading about nowadays. It is not something new.

I pulled up in our computer system a letter that I had recalled

writing back in 1997 to Chairman McHugh. This was in response

to a news report back in the middle of 1997 about the new Postmaster in Atlanta throwing a party for herself costing $45,000. It

is that sort of abuse of the public’s moneys that give us concern.

I just saw, as I am sure you have, this article from just a couple

of months ago about Postal Service executives using chauffeur-driven limousines. I would appreciate your comments on that, whether

that has been cut out completely.

Also, if you could, comment on the reports that I alluded to earlier with regard to the possibility of cutting back Saturday delivery.

I think if there is one thing that the Postal Service can do that will

guarantee its demise it is cut back or eliminate service on Saturday.

I can’t understand why something so self-destructive would even

be considered. I certainly understand that you all have to look at

cost-cutting measures. Certainly that is important. From time to

time you have to consider raising the postage rate. I think all of

us understand that. We may not always agree with the amount or

the timing. But I certainly, for one, understand that does have to

happen from time to time.

I also understand that many of your costs, not all of them, but

many of your costs are beyond your control, the cost of fuels, for

example.

So, I commend the Postal Service for exploring ways to streamline its operation, and encourage you to look at other ways of doing

so. But I would urge you to look at constructive ways of saving

money, not self-destructive ways.

Again, I would think that looking at curtailing Saturday deliveries would guarantee that millions of Americans would seriously

begin to look elsewhere for alternative ways to have their mail delivered.

I would like to know what is the thought process that is going

on that would lead to even considering something like that, given

what seems to me to be the obvious self-destructive nature of it.

Mr. HENDERSON. Let me go back to the first few issues. With

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stances of people abusing the rules of doing something that they

should not do.

I can assure you when that occurs, we work very closely with the

Inspector General. We take immediate action. If we have to change

the rules, we do that. If we have to discipline somebody, we do

that. If we have to fire somebody, we do that. So, we are going to

have instances of that. We are not proud of those instances. We

take action as a result of learning of those things.

With regard to Saturday delivery, what we are going to do is do

an internal study to see how much Saturday delivery actually costs

us and what savings are there. It is not a decision. A decision to

curtail Saturday delivery has not been made.

We have done this in the past. We did it in the 1970’s. In fact,

in the 1970’s I was a part of the task force that looked at what Saturday delivery cost us.

Then we are going to talk to our Board of Governors. They have

asked us to put a value on it and we are. That is what they publicly asked us to do yesterday. Our operating people will do that.

But there is no decision made today to eliminate Saturday delivery. There are some constituents of Saturday delivery that have to

be considered, some voices. One are the newspapers. Newspapers

rely on the Postal Service’s Saturday delivery in many places. That

is the only effective way they have of reaching their customers.

There has to be some consideration of that.

Another one would be remittance mail. Remittance mailers, people who receive their bills on Saturday are more likely to pay their

bills right away than those who receive their bills on Monday. That

is a study that the remittance mailers have made. So, there is obviously a financial impact on those folks.

Those are things we are aware of. We are not going to be irrational here. We are going to be prudent. But we do have a problem.

We have a problem that our customers are saying, ‘‘Don’t raise

rates, don’t raise rates.’’ The demand for Postal products is declining.

Mr. BARR. Mr. Chairman, could I just pose one quick followup

question, please?

I understand that the economy does have both an indirect and

a direct bearing on the manner and frequency with which people

use the Postal Service. It is the same as virtually every other service available to the public. I don’t think that looking at curtailing

Saturday delivery is irrational. It is super-rational, and that is the

problem.

It is looking at Postal delivery in terms of nothing but dollars

and cents. Therein, I think, lies the problem. You could look at the

dollars and cents of curtailing delivery every other day, I suppose,

and one could come up with a super rational argument that, hey,

it makes sense to do that. Let us do it.

I think you are making a serious mistake even suggesting that

you are going to open that can of worms. It is already causing,

maybe not a firestorm, but a lot of people asking very serious questions about the Postal Service. It is drawing a tremendous amount

of attention to you, not all positive.

I think there is just so much room for improvement in other

areas, why you would bite off that at the beginning of this exercise

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is something I don’t quite understand. I would urge you all to move

that off of the table. Look at these other areas and consider such

drastic steps as curtailing Saturday delivery way down the road, if

at all.

You are doing more than just making some adjustments to save

you money. You would be fundamentally altering what the Postal

Service means to American citizens if you do that. I think that

would be a fatal mistake for the Postal Service to do that. I don’t

think you ought to even go down that road at this point, even

studying it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Henderson, let me commend you for what I think has been

your ability to hold together a very complex system that was

fraught with many needs and problems. While it is easy for people

to throw darts from the outside, sometimes when you get on the

inside, you see things a little differently.

I think that you have demonstrated real management skill and

insight in terms of being the keeper of a complex system and a

complex process and especially the fact that we have seen some improvements relative to on-time delivery.

I commend you and your staff for the work that you have done.

When we talk about change and we talk about changes and everybody is saying we need some legislative fix, one of the things I

have also observed is that it is oftentimes much easier to say

things than it is to do them. Oftentimes, after all is said and done,

more gets said than done.

So, it is easy to talk about the fixes. In your mind, when we talk

about legislative changes or restructuring, what comes to mind?

Mr. HENDERSON. Well, I think the two big targets are: One is

pricing freedom and the other one is some solution other than arbitration to collective bargaining disputes. They are the two main

drivers of the Postal Service. Those are two areas that I think need

attention.

We have talked about some other areas like the ability to introduce new products in a rapid way. We have talked about the ability

to use our income for broader investments.

If you look at the posts around the world, and I know, Mr. Chairman, you see a growing move to unleash these postal services, and

I say ‘‘unleash’’ them because they go very aggressively into the

commercial markets.

I just had a meeting last week with Klaus Zumlichel who is the

head of the Deutsches Post. He is the head of the largest logistics

company in the world. He just bought the largest bank in Germany. He has an express mail business similar to the Postal Service’s and then he has a mail monopoly. He owns 51 percent of DHL.

I am not suggesting that we ought to become Deutsches Post.

But I am pointing out that the world is really changing rapidly. We

are like a Third World country post. We have these 31-year old

laws.

People ask me from foreign countries all the time, ‘‘Why doesn’t

the Postal Service change its legislative construction? Why is it lagVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00127 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\75418.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ging behind the likes of Royal Mail and the likes of the TPG, the

Dutch Post?’’ I really don’t have an explanation for them. They come over here

and they say, ‘‘You are destined for just higher prices. You know,

we have studied that model.’’ When I came to the Postal Service in 1972, we were the model

for the whole world. Everybody was coming to the United States

to see this new postal organization that was independent from government but still a part of government. Now they come here and

they are shocked.

Some of my colleagues in foreign posts have been there a long

time and they just don’t understand it. You know, I have been a

voice for reform until my voice has almost run out. I don’t know

what is going to precipitate it, I really don’t. But I think those

areas of pricing and controlling our labor costs are imperative.

Mr. DAVIS. It seems to me that a part of our financial difficult

has come as a result of our inability to deliver on promised savings,

I mean where projections were made that we were going to be able

to reduce costs. And we have not been able to deliver on those

promises.

Could you share why we were not able to deliver on those promises?

Mr. HENDERSON. Well, I think we have done a better job than

we get public credit for in terms of delivering. We talk about labor

productivity. We have had positive labor productivity in 1997, 1998

and 1999. In a year of declining mail volume, we have positive productivity this year. Last year we had the highest productivity we

have had in 9 years.

The difficulty is that you are wage rates go up beyond your productivity levels. Therefore, you net out at a cost. That is a fundamental issue with the Postal Service.

And, there are a lot of fixed costs in the Postal Service. We come

to your house, for example, we send a letter carrier by every day,

regardless of whether they have 50 pieces of mail or 5; when they

have 5 pieces of mail, you lose a lot; when they have 500 pieces

of mail, you make some money.

So, the infrastructure itself, it is a service to the American people, but it has built-in inefficiencies in it. You are not going to not

get mail. I don’t think anybody here is suggesting that we not deliver to everyone every day. In doing that, if you don’t have a robust mail system, it loses money.

I will give you another example of the business cycle. We make

all our money in the first two quarters of our fiscal year, September through quarter two. Our fiscal year begins in September.

We lose money the remaining two quarters of the fiscal year.

Somebody says, ‘‘Why do you do that?’’

It is because mail volume dries up. The last two quarters of our

fiscal year doesn’t have the robust mail volume. It is like the water

pressure in your house is going down and somebody says to you,

‘‘Why don’t you take out some pipes?’’

It is a fixed infrastructure and without robust volume, it is inefficient.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Mr. Otter.

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Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Henderson, I apologize for being gone while you were giving

your testimony, however, I did read your very informative written

testimony. I guess coming from Idaho I am not different than anybody else. You always hear from me when there is a problem. You

don’t hear from me when I get all my mail, especially all my bills,

then you don’t hear from me.

But those are the questions generally that I think I am asked.

I don’t hear from anybody that says, ‘‘Gee, the Post Office did a

great job for me today.’’ I hear from them when they say that you are not doing a good

job.

One of the questions that I have relates to my opening statement. My opening statement referred to one of the highest cost or

loss areas in the Postal Service, which seems to be the undeliverable mail or mail not deliverable at this address.

The figure that I had was $1.5 billion. Is that representative? Is

that about correct?

Mr. HENDERSON. That is in the ballpark.

Mr. OTTER. But this is not a phenomena that just happened in

the last few years. This is something that has been building and

so it has been part of that almost $10 billion in total net losses that

you are carrying on the books right now; isn’t it?

Mr. HENDERSON. The net loss is $3.4 billion.

Mr. OTTER. Aren’t you carrying a loss of what I thought was in excess, with this year, pretty close to $10 billion?

Mr. HENDERSON. You are talking about the negative net income?

Mr. OTTER. Yes.

Mr. HENDERSON. Yes.

Mr. OTTER. OK. That has to be paid for somewhere, sometime.

Mr. HENDERSON. That is right.

Mr. OTTER. You talked about the Deutsches Post. Are you familiar with the program they have, the Siemens Group has a national

registry for the change in addresses, that technology?

Mr. HENDERSON. Is that Fast Forward?

Mr. OTTER. Yes.

Mr. HENDERSON. Yes, I am.

Mr. OTTER. Now that technology has been around for quite some

time; hasn’t it?

Mr. HENDERSON. Yes.

Mr. OTTER. That technology seems to avert on-going costs that

would add up to the $1.5 billion. Have you looked at that program?

Mr. HENDERSON. Those are two separate issues. Undeliverable as

addressed is mail that has the wrong address on it. Fast Forward

says, I am going to move from Washington, DC, to New York City

and when the mail is addressed to me in Washington, DC, it will

automatically re-barcode the mail and send it to New York City.

Undeliverable as addressed is just a service that we provide. We

try to deliver mail to the address on the envelope. If that address

is bad or doesn’t exist, we obviously can’t deliver it. We have to dispose of it. But they are two separate things. They are not the same

thing.

Mr. OTTER. OK. So, then, take me through how it adds up to $1.5

billion loss. You have already got the 34 cents for the piece of mail

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that wasn’t deliverable. Does it cost you that to store it or what do

you do with it?

Mr. HENDERSON. It costs us that to handle it. It is a cost to the

Postal Service of handling mail that has a bad address on it. I can’t

tell you when we accept it if it is a bad address or not. When we

sort it and we can’t find the address, we dispose of the mail.

In America there are 630 million pieces a day. There are going

to be some bad addresses in that volume. That is just a part of the

service that we provide.

Mr. OTTER. OK. Let us move to another area that is a cost. That

is $300 to $500 million in advertising for a product on which the

Post Office enjoys a total monopoly.

Mr. HENDERSON. That number is not accurate.

Mr. OTTER. What would the number be?

Mr. HENDERSON. It is $161 million and it is primarily devoted to

the non-monopoly, the very competitive mail. When we don’t advertise, our share of the market goes down. It measurably goes down.

When we do advertise, our products grow.

So, it is an essential to stay competitive. We have been doing this

for years.

Mr. OTTER. There is one other area I would like to get in to that

I mentioned in my opening statement, the byproducts that you

produce, including the Internet high tech. How much has the Post

Office spent to get into the e-mail?

Mr. HENDERSON. Well, we have our own e-mail system, obviously, that we use for interoffice communications. I couldn’t tell you

off the top of my head how much it cost to install that e-mail system. I can tell you for the record. But it is a significant savings for

us, being able to go to a computer and if I want to talk to my Chief

Financial Officer, to be able to e-mail.

Mr. OTTER. No, I understand that. What I mean is, you don’t

offer an e-mail product available to the market place?

Mr. HENDERSON. Yes, we do offer a secure service to the marketplace.

Mr. OTTER. Yet, then isn’t it your testimony also that one of the

things cannibalizing the first class mail system is the e-mail?

Mr. HENDERSON. Well, e-mail is not having much of an impact

on first class mail because correspondence had gone away before email came along. I mean there is an assumption, and I think a logical assumption, by most people, that e-mail really banged us.

People didn’t write letters. By the time e-mail came along, people

had stopped writing each other all across America. What e-mail

represents is a technology that really leads to electronic data exchange, the B-to-B stuff, that has really been slowing down. That

has affected us, but not just the general e-mail.

Mr. OTTER. But you are not offering that product?

Mr. HENDERSON. We offer a secure e-mail, but not just the general e-mail. I think Social Security is the major customer of that

right now. We offer several varieties. We have a stamp. We offer

secure document services and those sorts of things, and we have

revenue streams from them.

Because they have upfront costs, they are not profitable yet. But

we have been instructed by our Governors to create P&Ls for all

of them. We implement all the GAO’s recommendations, so we are

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watching them very closely. According to our market research they

are promising, but they are not big deals.

I mean on a $67 billion base these are very small initiatives. We

are really focused on our core business. That is where the Postal

Service is going to hang its hat. We are actually learning them.

We have an e-bill pay service. One of the reasons we got into

electronic bill paying was to understand it better because it is

going to cannibalize the $17 billion of our core product, which is

first class mail. We do understand it a lot better right now than

we did before. It may not be the early threat that we thought it

was going to be. But learning experiences for the organization are

very important.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Henderson. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. McHugh.

Mr. MCHUGH. Bill, again, as I said earlier, thank you for your

service. Thank you for the hard work you have put forward. I know

all of us on the committee wish you well in your future endeavors,

whatever they may be.

Some of us may envy your escaping this current milieu but you

have certainly served your time and done more than your part. You

will go with our thanks.

One thing I am a little unclear on is on part of your talk with

Mr. Barr. If the large newspapers want Saturday mail, does that

mean we keep it or get rid of it?

Mr. HENDERSON. It doesn’t mean we keep it. I was just pointing

out that I have been talking to them and I know that they are not

very fond of it.

Mr. MCHUGH. I am not sure how we would vote on that.

Let us talk a little bit about what Mr. Otter probed you on. I

heard you correctly, I believe, that the largest share of your mail

advertising goes to your competitive products. But clearly there is

some direction toward your first class monopoly. What is happening to your first class monopoly?

Mr. HENDERSON. It is eroding. I mean it is virtually irrelevant.

If you were going to invest in a letter delivery company today, you

could not raise the venture capital to do it. There are just too many

other investments that have greater returns.

The margins on a 34-cent letter are fractional. So, while we have

protections that were relevant years ago, I think those protections

today are not as relevant. Also, you have electronic alternatives.

As Chairman Burton said, it is free, virtually free to send an email or communicate with somebody electronically. That is going to

occur, so the monopoly will be eroded over time.

Mr. MCHUGH. So, if you are required to do something, even

though I understand it is not a major portion of your budget, I

don’t think prudent business practices would suggest that you

shouldn’t advertise for something you are required to do and you

are already losing money on it, so you don’t want to lose share further. Would that be a fair statement?

Mr. HENDERSON. That is an accurate statement.

Mr. MCHUGH. I would like to talk about potential savings. Again,

Mr. Barr’s question, can I assume you don’t know what the actual

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cost versus the supposed benefits of delivery of Saturday mail are

at this moment?

Mr. HENDERSON. Not at this second, no. But I will know within

90 days.

Mr. MCHUGH. So, you are trying, which I think would be an important business practice, to assess a very important part of your

delivery system and find out what the investment is versus the return?

Mr. HENDERSON. That is right.

Mr. MCHUGH. Let us talk about another part, another distasteful

thing, but something I am wondering if you are looking at. You are

currently on a self-imposed moratorium on the closure of Post Offices that are operating. You are limited by statute from closing

smaller rural Post Offices, something that I am very interested in,

solely on the basis of economic concerns.

Has anybody looked at perhaps streamlining those organizations

and possibly assessing if that moratorium were to go away what

the cost of savings could be there?

Mr. HENDERSON. Yes, we are looking at that. We are looking at

the infrastructure, what we need and what 40,000 Post Offices cost

us across the United States. How many do we need? You do most

of your business in the largest 7,000. The remaining Post Offices

are there as a convenience to America.

As I said to Chairman Burton, in the 26,000 smallest offices of

the 40,000, it costs over $2 to take in $1. That is a very expensive

infrastructure. Yet, it is a presence. I understand the non-economic

side of it. People feel like they are losing their identity when they

close their Post Office, their sense of history.

The two things that Americans dislike most in rural America,

and you know this, too, is the fact when their newspaper closes or

their Post Office closes. They feel like they are somehow lost. We

understand that. But we have to examine every aspect of our infrastructure, what it costs and then we have to talk about it with our

customers in the pricing mechanism.

Mr. MCHUGH. Last, before my time runs out, you have recently

made a commitment, for lack of a better word, to find savings in

the elimination of 75,000 man-years over the next 5 years. When

roughly 80 percent of your costs are derived from a sole source, I

think it is logical that in desperate times you look at that kind of

saving.

But I don’t think you lose 75,000 man-years of service and not

have some diminutive effect upon the service itself. Were you able

to assess the tradeoffs that were involved in that kind of action?

Mr. HENDERSON. Yes. We have not done anything yet that would

affect the excellent service that Americans get all across this Nation. That would be a serious tradeoff. That is something, quite

frankly, we were asked the day before yesterday by our Governors.

We were asked to say, ‘‘What does it cost to have 95 percent’’—

and I am using this as an example—‘‘95 percent on-time delivery

in Washington, DC, whereas 6 or 7 years ago it was in the 40’s or

50’s?’’

Here is one of the individuals here, our Chief Financial Officer,

who helped improve service in this capital metro area. So, we are

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going to look at all aspects of it. There is nothing sacred. There are

no sacred cows in the Postal Service going forward.

Mr. MCHUGH. If I may, Mr. Chairman, one final question. I appreciate the committee’s patience.

There has been a lot of talk today about inefficiencies. I know

you would be the first to admit that you can, you are trying and,

hopefully, will do better. We need to be supportive of your effort

there as well.

Just for those who may not know, what is the price of a first

class stamp in America compared to other countries, even those

that have totally modernized and reorganized their structure?

Mr. HENDERSON. Well, it is about half of what it is in Germany,

for example. That is held up as the model for the world right now.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Half of what it is in Germany?

Mr. HENDERSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Scarborough.

Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to followup with a few questions regarding efficiencies at the Post Office. The Postal Service has been investigating automated sortation and information technology now for quite

a few years.

However, we hear reports from the GAO that the Postal Service

has only increased its efficiency by about 10 percent over the last

three decades. Would you give us an update on what is happening

with that process and why efficiency improved at a faster rate?

Mr. HENDERSON. That indicia that GAO is talking about is an indicia that we created. It is called ‘‘Total Factor Productivity.’’ It is

not labor productivity. It is Total Factor Productivity. It really

measures the health of an industry. Total Factor Productivity takes

into account labor productivity, but it also takes into account capital you invest and the cost of supplies and services.

So, it has an indicia in it that is called labor productivity. That

is a gauge of our automation. If you looked at the productivity level

in 1988, prior to automation, and you looked at it today and we

had the same productivity today that we had in 1988, you would

have to add 100,000 workers to the roles of the Postal Service.

Automation has made a huge impact. But we also get 1.8 million

deliveries a year additional in the Postal Service and have had for

years. If you say, ‘‘What is that?’’ We are adding a city the size of

Chicago annually. So, there is a counter balance there between

growth in mail volume, which has been traditional up until this

year, and growth in deliveries.

You balance that with what you are able to take out in automation. If you look at the mail processing, the productivity of letter

mail, that is primarily where these billions of dollars have been focused, you will see that the actual costs of mail processing of letter

mail are declining.

That is why you can have only a penny increase in the price of

first class postage.

Mr. SCARBOROUGH. OK. Well, you said, ‘‘Well, we have also been

picking up more volume of work.’’ But in this U.S. News and World

Report article that has been passed around, the people are talking

about your work force has grown, which, of course, it needs to

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grow. But it has grown to 900,000, which this U.S. News article

says is the second largest work force in America, right behind WalMart.

Have you parted with FedEx recently? I am wondering, in that

partnership with FedEx are you looking at best practices regarding

not only automation but also labor, sort of handling labor practices

and how to make that whole process more efficient from top to bottom?

Mr. HENDERSON. We do that as a matter of practice. But we

don’t have any agreement with FedEx to do that. Our Federal Express agreement is essentially a transportation agreement. They

will in the future fly first class, express and priority mail.

We in turn allow FedEx boxes to be on Postal property. I will add

there is not exclusivity to this. We will talk to anybody.

Mr. SCARBOROUGH. You would allow UPS to place their boxes on

your property?

Mr. HENDERSON. We would likely talk to UPS if they wanted to

talk.

Mr. SCARBOROUGH. OK. I was just joking with you. You don’t

have to if you don’t want to.

Mr. HENDERSON. Thank you.

Mr. SCARBOROUGH. I would suggest, looking at private industry.

This is in reference from the U.S. News article that was sent

around. It says labor costs, and everybody has talked about this,

eat up 76 percent of your revenues, which I certainly understand

the problems inherent there. They say that compares to 56 percent

at UPS and 42 percent at FedEx.

One final question I have has to do with your postal rate increase for magazines. I don’t have information in front of me right

now. But if I am not mistaken, at the beginning of the year that

rate increase shot up about 10 percent. There is now a proposal on

the table to increase that another 15 percent.

That is a pretty dramatic increase, 25 percent in about 6-months

time. That is a heck of a hit for the magazine industry and more

importantly, for the consumers to get those magazines delivered. Is

it not?

Mr. HENDERSON. It is a heck of a hit for the magazine industry.

We work with them. Their costs are higher than the other classes

of mail. That is unfortunate. If we had a different rate-setting process, for example, magazines generate a lot of mail. They are at one

point in the value chain. They have business reply mail inside of

them. They have subscriptions that you write oftentimes and send

first class mail.

But we have to treat them like a commodity. That is one of the

fundamental flaws. You ought to be able to look at the value chain

of these things that generate a lot of mail. We are not able to under

the current cost-setting regime.

Mr. SCARBOROUGH. I appreciate your responses and appreciate

your time here. I really do think a 25 percent increase in 6 months

is a little bit excessive.

Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Scarborough.

Mr. LaTourette.

Mr. LATOURETTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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I apologize. I had to go listen to the new Secretary of Transportation, Mr. Mineta, next door. I did hear the opening statements

of some of my colleagues, though.

Anybody who wonders why you find yourself in this situation

should have watched Ms. Wilhite on CSPAN this morning who did

a great job for the Service talking about the increase in fuel costs,

the impact of technology on your mail volume and some of the sag

in the economy.

I did want to go back to something Mr. Scarborough was asking

you about. I think the last time you were before the subcommittee

that doesn’t exist anymore there had been some news accounts and

reports of the pending agreement with FedEx. Now we know that

has gone forward.

If I could, I would like to revisit some of those issues. At that

hearing, and sadly, I am not one of those guys who goes back and

gets a transcript, so we are going to have to rely on my faulty

memory. But I think I expressed some concerns about the anti-competitive nature of it. I think you made the observation that you had

a legal opinion at the time that it didn’t have to be bid. There has

now been litigation that confirms that position.

I am aware of and I assume you are aware of the fact that some

of your regional carriers are making the observation that they

could deliver the same service for less money. The question I have

for you, despite the fact that you are right legally or not, and you

clearly are, but if that is a valid claim, my question is, why would

one of the largest contracts in the Postal Service’s history, to my

understanding, one, be of a 7-year duration, and two, not be opened

up for competitive bids so that you get the best price for the service?

Mr. HENDERSON. Well, we did an extensive evaluation of Federal

Express. We are in litigation, so I am limited in what I can talk

about. But I can tell you that this is the best transportation arrangement that the U.S. Postal Service has ever had in its history.

It is going to be terrific for the American people. Priority Mail

is going to be virtually 100 percent on time. Trust me, it is a terrific deal.

Mr. LATOURETTE. I think Federal Express is a wonderful company. I am not disparaging their ability to move things around the

world in any way. The question is, if in fact, I think the specific

figure that I saw was something like a 35 percent savings.

Are you saying that because of the value of having this on-time

delivery it doesn’t matter what it costs or that the increased costs

justifies the benefits or are you disputing the fact that in fact these

services could be obtained by the Service for less money?

Mr. HENDERSON. What we are saying is that in the past we have

paid a fully loaded cost. In other words, we have had to lease a

fleet. We pay for the whole fleet. Now, we have a variable cost. We

don’t have to lease a fleet. We are leasing space.

It is the same arrangements we have with the airlines. If you

look at flying mail, 28 cents a pound on the commercial airlines as

opposed to at one point on our leased airplanes it was $1. But with

Federal Express we get the variable costs and not the fully loaded

costs because they have other things that they are charging against

it. That makes it very economic for us.

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Mr. LATOURETTE. It is my understanding that some of the terms

of the agreement put a ceiling, if you will, on the amount of mail

that Federal Express is obligated to carry. Is that correct?

Mr. HENDERSON. I think that is a minimum. That is a level of

detail that I am not familiar with.

Mr. LATOURETTE. I think it is a maximum, too. So, the question

I have is do you know that not to be true? If it is not, I won’t even

ask the question.

Mr. HENDERSON. I don’t know the answer. I can get the answer,

but I don’t know the answer.

Mr. LATOURETTE. If you could. My specific question is if there is

in fact a maximum that they are obligated to carry. It seems to me

in some of the literature, at least prior to this agreement, they listed the Postal Service and the Postal Service listed FedEx as a competitor, and you were in certain product lines.

But having a maximum obligation, it appears to me, if that is

one of the contract terms, seems to place in the hands of a former

competitor a great deal of power over the U.S. Postal Service. So,

I would be interested in the answer to that.

The last observation, if you can sort of dig up the answer to the

question as well, at the previous hearing we talked about having

FedEx boxes at Postal Services. As a matter of fact, in my District

office in Paynesville, I can look out on a beautiful square where I

see three mailboxes and I see one FedEx box. Not only the placement of the FedEx boxes, but how the Postal Inspectors are going

to be utilized relative to FedEx activities.

My specific question is whether or not anyone at the Postal Service has solicited or received an opinion from the Justice Department or anywhere else as to whether or not we have come up proper with some of the Anti-Trust laws of this country. Anything that

the Service can provide in writing, I would very much appreciate.

Mr. HENDERSON. OK.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. LaTourette.

Let me just ask a couple of more questions to followup on Mr.

LaTourette’s. You said you did an evaluation. I have high regard

for FedEx, UPS, all the major deliverers, so I am not picking on

anybody. But, why wasn’t there a competitive bid on that contract

that set out all the criteria that you required, all the things that

you required, and then when you got the bids to make sure they

could meet all the requirements or else the bid was null and void?

Mr. HENDERSON. There is a short answer and then I will provide

for the record a very detailed answer.

Mr. BURTON. OK. That will be fine.

Mr. HENDERSON. The short answer is we didn’t look at the competitive field. We had an evaluation by outsiders, experts. Really,

there was no one——

Mr. BURTON. Who were those outside people?

Mr. HENDERSON. Price Waterhouse Coopers. Our transportation

people felt very strongly that it was unnecessary. We litigated that.

I mean that was the complaint against us and we won the litigation. It was a very thorough job that was done.

We think we have a wonderful partner in Federal Express, as I

said to Mr. LaTourette. It is the best transportation deal we have

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ever had in the Postal Service, both from a economic point of view,

but more importantly from a service point of view.

This is going to take a product that has been 2 or 3 days in the

marketplace and make it 2 days 100 percent, virtually 100 percent

of the time.

Mr. BURTON. I was told, and I don’t know how accurate this is,

that the contract is around $6 to $7 billion. According to some of

their competitors that have contacted a number of us in the Congress, $2 to $3 billion could have been saved if another carrier had

the contract.

Is that a stretch?

Mr. HENDERSON. That is more than a stretch. That is a leap.

Mr. BURTON. Just out of curiosity, how do you know that?

Mr. HENDERSON. Because we did an evaluation. We have been in

the transportation business for a long time. We have arrangements

with a number of people all across America, many of which are

complaining now. So, we know their internal costs. We understand

the efficiencies of air transportation. I can tell you, and I will provide you in writing a detailed rebuttal to what those folks are saying.

Mr. BURTON. We would like to have that for the record just so

we have all the facts straight. I guess Price Waterhouse evaluated

that as well.

Mr. HENDERSON. I will be happy to provide you that evaluation.

Mr. BURTON. OK.

We have asked many questions today about the Postal Service

and how they have saved money in the past and where they might

save money in the future. Hypothetically, if your cost containment

efforts could save you $3 billion, how would that impact your decision to file a rate case this year?

Mr. HENDERSON. It could postpone the decision if you made $3

billion in cost savings. This year, if you got them now, you could

actually postpone the rate increase. But ultimately, it is a shortterm fix. Ultimately, you need postal reform. We need postal reform.

Mr. BURTON. I understand because we talked earlier in the meeting today about if you close down Post Offices and you went with

cluster boxes and closed Post Offices and did some other economies,

you could probably save a one-time savings of a few billion. But

that would only postpone the inevitable.

Mr. HENDERSON. That is right. It is not a fix. It is what David

Walker said from GAO. There are some short-term fixes like raising rates or cutting costs. But long term, if you don’t have transformation, he calls it ‘‘transformation,’’ if you don’t have postal reform it is not going to fix the problem.

Mr. BURTON. Let me ask you this: Let us say that we are working on a postal reform bill that meets the problem, and we are

going to try like heck to do that, in the interim, so that we don’t

cause some small businesses and other mailers who are using the

mail a great deal, using the Postal Service a great deal, to keep

them from either going out of business or losing a great deal of

profit and making them uncompetitive, magazines and other things

like that, could these short-term economies you are talking postVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00137 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\75418.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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pone it while the Congress tries to reach an agreement on a postal

reform bill? Could that postpone a rate increase?

Mr. HENDERSON. In my opinion, it will not. We are going to look

at some ways. John Nolan, the Deputy Postmaster General, is

heading up an effort to look at some creative ways of getting finances with the Postal Rate Commission without a huge rate increase. We have not completed those yet.

But we are going to work with the industry, people like magazine

publishers and newspapers and all to see if there is a way. This

conversation came about over the last several weeks, especially at

the last National Postal Forum where we had all of our customers.

We are going to study alternatives here. But we are in a vice

right now. We are in a box. We have declining volumes, revenues

way under planned. The solution to price increases in the long haul

is to support your efforts in postal reform.

Mr. BURTON. Could you keep Mr. Davis and myself and Mr.

Davis and Mr. Waxman and Mr. McHugh in the loop on that as

well as other Members of the Congress, so we can be as up-to-date

as possible without having everybody come in for another hearing?

Mr. HENDERSON. OK.

Mr. BURTON. We will now call our third panel, Mr. David

Fineman, the vice chairman of the Board of Governors and the following members of the Board, Tirso del Junco, Alan Kessler,

Ernesta Ballard.

Am I missing somebody?

Mr. FINEMAN. No. It is just a little bit different. Mr. John Walsh

is here and former Governor McWherter is not here.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Walsh, we will have you in his stead.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. BURTON. I guess, Mr. Fineman, you are going to make the

opening statement.

Mr. FINEMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. BURTON. OK, Mr. Fineman, you are recognized.

STATEMENTS OF S. DAVID FINEMAN, VICE CHAIRMAN, BOARD

OF GOVERNORS, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE, ACCOMPANIED BY

TIRSO DEL JUNCO, GOVERNOR, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE; ALAN

C. KESSLER, GOVERNOR, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE; ERNESTA

BALLARD, GOVERNOR, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE; AND JOHN

WALSH, GOVERNOR, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE

Mr. FINEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me take this opportunity to first, before I say anything, to

thank you for holding these hearings and to thank you for your interest in the Postal Service and thank you for your interest in reform.

Congressman McHugh, I want to thank as well, as well as Congressman Davis, for their interest in reform.

I want to take another opportunity to do one more thing. One of

the things that the Board of Governors does, maybe our most important thing, is the hiring and firing of the Postmaster General.

We are in the process now of looking for a new Postmaster General. I want to take this public opportunity with the Congress to

thank Mr. Henderson for his years of service with us. It clearly was

a good choice for us to have made in the hiring of Mr. Henderson.

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We have a prepared statement which I have given to you. I don’t

want to reiterate it at this late hour.

Let me just take a couple of minutes to tell you what the frustration is of being on the Board of Governors of the Postal Service and

why we are coming here today to ask you for the necessary reform,

much of which has been spoken about this morning.

The frustration is actually a rate case. We have talked about

what a rate case could be. Let us talk about a rate case was. The

actual process, begins 6 months ahead of time and we are now in

that process, of saying to the management, OK, let us go look and

study what a rate case should be.

Following that 6 months, management come back to us. Over

some period of time we meet and discuss the various rates. Then

actually a truck pulls up to the Post Office, our offices, unloads

tons of paper and takes it over to the Postal Rate Commission.

The Postal Rate Commission then holds hearings for about 10

months. Following that, a decision comes back to the Board of Governors and then we have a opportunity to modify that decision.

Let us look at what we did here. We sent that decision back to

the Postal Rate Commission. What does the Postal Rate Commission do? It reviews that decision again and it comes back to the

Board of Governors.

What does the Board of Governors have an opportunity to do?

We can implement the decision, even though we might not necessarily agree with the Postal Rate Commission, and in this case,

we sent it back to the Postal Rate Commission again for a review.

During that period of time, the Postal Rate Commission can send

the decision back to us. We are still waiting, actually, for the decision to come back. It has been over there about 30 days or so.

During that period of time we have no power. We can’t change

our rates. Our hands are tied. There is no ability to run the Postal

Service as you would run a private business.

At the same time, as you have mentioned before, the largest part

of our costs are fixed by a third party.

Under those circumstances, Mr. Chairman, we come to you, we

come to Congress and ask you please enact some legislation that

gives us the power to do in 1971 what Congress said, which is to

act like a business.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fineman follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much. Let me start off by saying

I presume that you sent to, previously, Mr. McHugh and Mr. Davis

your recommendations on how to streamline the process.

Mr. FINEMAN. I think that is a fair question. During the previous

administration, I would say, that the Board of Governors could not

reach consensus. We are appointed by various Presidents and we

are a bipartisan group. The statute provides five of us be of one

party and four of another. There was no consensus reached by the

Board previously.

The letter which we sent to the leaders in Congress and to the

President of the United States set forth the views of all of the

members of the Board as it is constituted today.

Mr. BURTON. Was it individual views or the unanimous view of

the Board?

Mr. FINEMAN. The letter that we sent to the leadership and to

you, Mr. Davis and Mr. McHugh, and all Members of Congress, we

assume, have it now, is the unanimous views of all of the members

of the Board.

Mr. BURTON. I don’t have that letter in front of me, but does that

letter spell out the reforms that you think are necessary to make

this operate in a more efficient, business-like manner?

Mr. FINEMAN. I think what it does is it sets forth in general principle the kind of reforms that we think are necessary.

Mr. BURTON. Let me suggest, and I suggested this in my opening

comments today, that every segment of our society that is interested in the problems we face needs to get to the relevant committees, and particularly this committee, since we have the jurisdiction, the recommendations that they think should be incorporated

into a postal reform bill.

Now, we have a lot of good things in the bill and Mr. McHugh

and Mr. Davis fashioned in previous Congresses. But obviously

there were some problems with that; otherwise we would have gotten it passed.

What we would like to have is the direct mailers, the newspapers, the magazine people, the Board of Governors, everybody

tell us from their point of view, individually or collectively as

groups, what you think ought to be in the bill so we can craft it

as quickly as possible and try to meet the requirements that are

necessary to solve the problem and make this more like a business

instead of, it sounds like a hodgepodge of things.

I can’t imagine you playing ping-pong with those rate increases.

That is what you were doing. They sent it to you and you sent it

back. They sent it to you and you sent it back. Obviously, that is

not the way to run a business. There has to be a final decisionmaking process that is going to stand.

So, if you and your colleagues on the Board have some suggestions, as quickly as you can reach agreement, we would sure like

to have those.

Mr. FINEMAN. We will submit them to you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Would you do that?

Mr. FINEMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. BURTON. In an attempt to contain costs, hearings the Board

considered reducing the work force through attrition?

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Mr. FINEMAN. We have told management to go forward with

every kind of cost saving that they can attempt to reach. We obviously don’t want to decrease service. But at the same time, we have

put everything on the table, Mr. Chairman. One of them is obviously reduction in our work force. But we don’t want to reduce

service.

Mr. BURTON. I understand. But have you urged and taken a look

at automation and other new technologies that might be able to not

take the place of people, but those who are leaving through attrition or through retirements, to cut down the costs? Much like I said

before when the auto industry went to robotics.

Mr. FINEMAN. Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. That is one of the

things that we have done. I think we can be proud of the automation system that has come about. We have heard the Postmaster

talk about the productivity gains that we have had.

Mr. BURTON. But I was wondering if there is more.

Mr. FINEMAN. I think there is a higher bar that can be reached.

I think that I speak for everyone on this Board in saying that to

you. That is the challenge that we have given to management.

Mr. BURTON. We would like to have the recommendations for

that as well.

Let me ask one more question here while I have the time. How

frequently does the Board of Governors meet with the major mailers or trade associations that represent them?

Mr. FINEMAN. I cannot say that there are regular, periodic meetings. I can say that Chairman Rider, who is not here today, and

myself met with I believe it to be all the major mailers organizations to have a frank conversation with them. Obviously, they

talked to us about rates. We talked to them about reform. We had

a very, very frank conversation.

There is not a regular periodic meeting. I do personally believe

that we have to reach out and meet with those mailers on a regular

basis.

Mr. BURTON. Well, they are very concerned, a number of them,

as you know, the smaller ones about going out of business because

costs are getting out of control. The larger ones are concerned as

well. So, I hope you will make those as frequent as you can. I know

you have a lot on your plate.

The Postmaster General, who we all agree has done an outstanding job, has announced his retirement. What unique qualifications

and leadership traits will the Board be looking for when they select

the next Postmaster and when do you anticipate making an announcement?

Mr. FINEMAN. Well, we have no one right now. I want to make

that perfectly clear. We are still in the process of interviewing.

When we leave here we are going to leave to begin some more

interviews this afternoon. We conducted some yesterday afternoon.

We have been working on this for some period of time.

I think it is probably one of the most difficult jobs in government.

Not a whole lot of people are raising their hand volunteering. We

are trying to seek out the best person from both the private sector

and government service who can lead an organization of almost

800,000 people, 38,000 locations, with all the problems that this

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committee has gone through earlier this morning, into the 21st century.

I guarantee you that this is at the top of our priorities, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. I am sure it is. Since we are all trying to see more

sound business practices incorporated into the Postal Service, I

hope you will look long and hard at people in the free enterprise

system who have shown superior talents in using business practices to streamline businesses.

You will notice a lot of the major corporations will steal an executive from one to the other because they are so effective at dealing

with these complex problems when we have so much competition.

I hope you will do the same thing.

Mr. FINEMAN. We will. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Fineman, let me appreciate the work that you and your colleagues do as members of the Board of Governors. Let me also express an appreciation for the frustration that you amplified as you

started your testimony. It does seem to me that it would be somewhat difficult to be part of a management operation but not really

have the authority to make management decisions that impact

heavily upon what it is that you do.

So, I think we heard you when you talked about the Postal Rate

Commission and the relationship between the two and where the

Board sits in relationship to where they are.

But let me ask you, in your letters to us, you have mentioned collective bargaining and compulsory arbitration as some concerns.

Let me ask what it is that you would hope to accomplish by raising

that issue and what is it that you think legislatively might be done

that could alleviate whatever problems you see with the issue?

Mr. FINEMAN. Congressman, you come from Chicago and I come

from Philadelphia. We could argue as to which town is more of a

labor town, whether it is Philadelphia or Chicago.

My friends in the labor unions in Philadelphia, I am sure, would

argue hard for Philadelphia. There is no intention, and I want to

make this perfectly clear, no intention on our part to take away

from the collective bargaining process. I believe in the collective

bargaining process, as do my colleagues.

What we are talking about is the third party arbitrator who

makes these decisions in a vacuum. I think that there are various

models that are out there that we should look at—I say ‘‘we’’ collectively with Congress, as to what else can be done.

I am a lawyer, Labor Law 101 told us that when there is friction

between labor and management when they negotiate a contract. At

the end of the day after both parties negotiate the contract, because they have risks on both sides, they probably walk out and

they have better labor-management relationships.

That is what I think we have to find. One of the things that Postmaster General Henderson mentioned was the Railway Labor Act.

I think that is a good place to start. That is the kind of thing that

we are talking about, Congressman.

Mr. DAVIS. Has there ever been, to your knowledge, any cost or

amount put on the difficulties that we have experienced or continue

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to experience relative to labor-management relations and how

much time and how much energy, and ultimately how much of the

cost of operating the system this becomes for us?

Mr. FINEMAN. I can’t tell you with any specificity what it is, but

there is not infrequently a Board meeting where it isn’t something

that is discussed, the amount of time that people spend at mediations, arbitrations, spend on grievances.

Now, there is a great success story at the Postal Service, one that

has been modeled all over the United States, which is the Redress

System in which we try to mediate the differences between the parties before they get to the grievance stage.

It is a real success story as to how they have been able to lower

costs. But obviously, it is a great cost, Congressman.

Mr. DAVIS. If we could get a better handle on that, in all likelihood, we could actually save ourselves a great deal of money as

well as time and other kinds of things.

Mr. FINEMAN. I believe so.

Mr. DAVIS. Let me ask you, even though this was not a part of

your testimony, but I couldn’t help but be intrigued as we were listening to the discussion relative to partnership with FedEx. I was

trying to figure out how can we determine marketplace impact on

ultimate costs unless we are negotiating with the marketplace as

opposed to an entity within the marketplace.

Would you have any idea?

Mr. FINEMAN. I can only say that this Board, when the FedEx

contract was discussed with it, was concerned about many of the

things that the Congress was concerned with as well. As a result,

we decided that we would hire our own counsel to look at that contract. We listened to the experts from Price Waterhouse. We listened to experts about a fairness opinion from Morgan Stanley. We

became convinced that it was the right thing to do.

Mr. DAVIS. I don’t doubt any of the experts. It just seems to me

that that is a concept in terms of free enterprise that I have a little

bit of difficulty understanding. But certainly we will get additional

information, I am sure.

Mr. FINEMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I have no further questions.

Mr. BURTON. I just have a couple more questions. I want to

thank you very much for your patience. I know it has been a long

day and your rear end starts falling asleep.

Mr. FINEMAN. We are still with you, Congressman.

Mr. BURTON. What is that saying? ‘‘The mind can’t focus on

things that the rear can’t tolerate?’’ It is something like that.

There is a potential rate increase pending now. You have played

ping-pong with it. The economies that we have talked about today

that the Postmaster talked about could affect the profitability of

the Post Office or non-profitability of the Post Office.

Is it absolutely essential that there be a rate increase in the not

too distant future or can this be handled through economies in the

Post Office while we try to fashion some kind of solution here in

the legislative branch?

Mr. FINEMAN. We are going to attempt to do everything we can

not to have a rate increase. But on the other hand, if it is absoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00159 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\75418.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lutely necessary, we will go forward with it. We are going to do

what we have to do in our fiduciary obligation.

I would say this: One of the things that I heard some of the Congressmen talking about earlier is the fear that I have and it is the

system that doesn’t provide any solution for us. Because the fear

that I have is that if we impose a rate increase and then we deplete the amount of mail that we have, this is only a spiral that

we can’t get ourselves out of.

Mr. BURTON. That is absolutely right.

Mr. FINEMAN. When we met with the mailers, you know, and

they are begging us that their companies are going to suffer as a

result of a rate increase, I feel for them. That is the question of

reform. That is the question as to why we need reform.

The other part of it is that we cannot do this under present statute. We have no choice because we have this cost-based system so

we can’t do anything without a market-based system. It is a frustrating position to be in. I feel the pain, to some degree, that the

mailers have. I want to feel their pain. I say to them, ‘‘I want you

to sit in my seat for a minute as the steward here and not roll up

this deficit.’’

I think you have to remember something. What we have been

able to do before, when we talk about a rate increase, one of the

things that the system does allow us is that we propose rates to

the Rate Commission. It will take them almost 10 months to get

back to us.

Then we have a choice as to when we impose the rate. The rate

is not going to be imposed at the time we make the submission to

the Postal Rate Commission. We will do everything in our power;

particularly if some of the measures that we have asked management to reach out for can be implemented within that period of

time.

Mr. BURTON. I think the point that you made we have made and

it has been made over and over again. The analogy was the car

business. If you are having a problem, lacking sales and lacking

revenues, if you raise the price you certainly aren’t going to solve

the problem. You are going to compound it. I am afraid that that

might be what you are talking about.

We are going to try to talk to the White House, and I hope you

will as well and the new Postmaster will as well, telling them that

this is a problem that needs to be addressed by not only the legislative but also the executive branch and some leadership to really try

to force this issue.

Let me ask one more question and then I will let you go. Has

the Postal Service generated a net profit from its e-commerce initiatives, do you know, like its E-bill Pay Program?

Mr. FINEMAN. At this point I can’t tell you that we have. The

numbers that have been given to us by management so far indicate

that there are losses. The losses are small in relationship to the

general revenue of the Postal Service, but they are not profitable

at this point.

Mr. BURTON. Well, any information you can give us on that or

anything else that you think might be a helpful solution, we would

like to have.

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Do any of the rest of you have any comments you would like to

make? We appreciate you all being here.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, before you wrap up, I would just like

to be sure that you have unanimous consent for Mr. Towns to submit his remarks for the record and that we have unanimous consent to leave the hearing open so that individuals who have questions and were not here can get those in.

Mr. BURTON. Without objection, it is so ordered. We will ask if

the Members have questions if we can submit them to the people

who testified today for answers in writing.

Mr. FINEMAN. We will look forward to answering them. Thank

you again, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much. We will continue to work

with you to solve this problem.

We stand adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:05 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Edolphus Towns, Hon. Donald

Manzullo, and additional information submitted for the hearing

record follows:]

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(187)

THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE’S UNCERTAIN

FINANCIAL OUTLOOK, PART II

WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2001

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 10 a.m., in room 2154,

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dan Burton (chairman of the

committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Burton, Gilman, Morella, Shays,

McHugh, LaTourette, Barr, JoAnn Davis of Virginia, Otter,

Schrock, Waxman, Owens, Mink, Norton, Kucinich, Davis of Illinois, Tierney, and Clay.

Staff present: Kevin Binger, staff director; Daniel R. Moll, deputy

staff director; David A. Kass, deputy chief counsel; Mark Corallo,

director of communications; John Callender, counsel; S. Elizabeth

Clay, professional staff member; Sarah Anderson and Scott Fagan,

staff assistants; Robert A. Briggs, chief clerk; Robin Butler, office

manager; Josie Duckett, deputy communications director; Leneal

Scott, computer systems manager; John Sare, deputy chief clerk;

Corinne Zaccaagnini, systems administrator; Phil Barnett, minority

chief counsel; Denise Wilson, minority professional staff member;

Ellen Rayner, minority chief clerk; and Jean Gosa and Earley

Green, minority assistant clerks.

Mr. BURTON. Good morning. A quorum being present, the committee will come to order.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members’ and witnesses’ opening statements be included in the record. And without objection, so

ordered.

I would also like to ask, we have some people who would have

liked to testify today, that are not testifying. They have some statements that they would like to include in the record. And without

any objection, we would like to include their statements in the

record. So, without objection, we will put those in the record as

well.

I ask unanimous consent that all articles, exhibits, or extraneous

or tabular material referred to be included in the record. Without

objection, so ordered.

I have been advised that we are going to have a vote in a few

minutes. So what we are going to do is we are going to have Mr.

Waxman, Mr. Waxman has to meet with the leadership on the

Democrat side, so we are going to have him give his opening statement and then we will let him go. We will then recess until we

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have the vote and then we will come back. I apologize for the delay

but it is not me calling this vote.

I will now yield to Mr. Waxman for an opening statement. I will

reserve my time until we come back after the vote.

Mr. Waxman.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for allowing

me to make my opening statement first. Because I have a conflict,

I will have to leave in a minute. I will try to get back to the hearing, but if not, I will certainly review the record.

Today, we begin part II of oversight hearings on the U.S. Postal

Service’s uncertain financial outlook. I want to begin by commending Chairman Burton for his continued commitment to postal

issues. The financial status of the Postal Service is an important

matter deserving of our time and focus. The impact of recent postal

rate increases on mail volume and postal revenue is an important

subject and one that we will vigorously discuss today.

Much has taken place since our first hearing on April 4th. Two

days after our hearing, Senator Harkin introduced S. 71, a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that 6 day mail delivery

should not be reduced. Tomorrow, Representative Danny K. Davis,

chairman of the Congressional Postal Caucus, will introduce a companion House Resolution. I urge my colleagues to lend their support to this measure.

Two weeks after our first hearing, the Coalition to Preserve Universal Mail Service presented an outline of a legislative approach

to address the financial crisis facing the Postal Service. We will be

able to explore the matter of reform further since many of the Coalition members are present today.

On May 7, the Postal Board of Governors voted to implement a

new postal rate schedule. Under this schedule, rates for a 1 ounce,

first-class letter stay at 34 cents, and an additional ounce will cost

23 cents. The cost for postcards will increase 1 cent, and rates will

also increase for express mail, certified mail, and domestic money

orders.

On Monday the Mailers Council unveiled its first quarterly report card on the Postal Service. The grades reflect the Postal Service productivity in six categories, ranging from retail services to

revenue per work hour. This performance tool will be issued quarterly and is designed to help the Postal Service achieve greater productivity. And late yesterday the Postal Board of Governors released a series of principles to guide postal reform.

I look forward to working with the chairman and members of the

postal community as we discuss the actions needed to improve

postal management and finances. I want to welcome all of today’s

witnesses. In particular, I am glad to see that Congresswoman Pat

Schroeder, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from

1972 until 1996, will testify today. Among her many accomplishments, Representative Schroeder served on the Committee on Post

Office and Civil Service, so she is clearly no stranger to postal

issues or postal finances.

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Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you. I will certainly get the record of all the witnesses. Those I am not able to

hear personally, I will have a chance to get their testimony. Thank

you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Waxman.

I think we will go ahead and proceed with opening statements

until we are called to the floor. That way we can expedite some of

the things that need to be done.

We received, as Henry alluded to, a letter from the Postal Board

of Governors, and, although we have not yet reviewed that, since

we want to have everybody on the same page, I think we will make

available to all the interested parties the recommendations of the

Board of Governors as far as postal reform is concerned. This is a

letter that was dated May 15. We just received it this morning. So

we are making 100 copies and will have those for anybody who is

interested. If we run out of copies, we will get some more. The reason we want to do that is we want to make sure that you understand what they are recommending and we want to get input from

everybody so that we can come up with the best possible solution

to the problem.

At our first hearing on this issue held last month, we heard from

a number of distinguished witnesses, including the Postmaster

General, the Comptroller General, and members of the Postal

Board of Governors. Postmaster General Henderson discussed the

agency’s gloomy financial forecast and projected losses of more than $2 billion, and some believe as high as $3 billion, this year. The

independent and nonpartisan General Accounting Office reported

that the financial, operational, and work force challenges facing the

Postal Service are so severe that the GAO added the agency’s need

to address these challenges to its ‘‘High Risk’’ list. I think just yesterday Senator Thompson in the Senate mentioned how important

this issue is, because it is now one of the highest risk areas of the

Government. The Board of Governors stressed the need for postal

reform, and also discussed steps taken in recent weeks to address

problems facing the agency.

I want to say, Representative Davis, I will be glad to cosponsor

your resolution on the 6 day mail delivery not being changed. So

put me on, if you would.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. The Board suspended capital construction projects,

ordered a study of 5 day mail delivery, and directed the Postal

Service to prepare for a new rate case.

Since the hearing, the Board announced that it was going to

raise rates effective July 1. In announcing the new rates, the Board

took the unusual step of overturning the Postal Rate Commission.

In fact, this is I believe only the second time since the enactment

of the Postal Reorganization Act in 1970 that the Board has overruled the Postal Rate Commission and raised rates. We are disappointed that happened. I talked to the Board of Governors yesterday and will be meeting with them next week to talk about what

the future prospects are for additional rate increases. I think we

need to solve this problem with a minimal impact on the American

people and the people who are doing mailing, and a lot of you are

here today.

Prior to the Board’s announcement, several Members of Congress, including myself, Congressman McHugh, and both the House

and Senate Majority Leaders, contacted the chairman of the Board

of Governors urging them not to raise rates. But they did not pay

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much attention to us. So we are going to have another meeting

with them to see if we cannot have a little more input.

I am very concerned about the July rate increase. I am also concerned about reports of another more substantial rate filing being

proposed for later this year. The impact of these increases on businesses and consumers can be devastating. The increases are a temporary solution to a long-term problem. They could also have the

unintended consequences of driving postal business away. Rate increases could force some mailers to seek alternatives or cause them

to close down entirely. Other mailers will pass the additional cost

on to consumers resulting in higher prices for products being

shipped through the mail. And if we have a rate increase on first

class mail as well, then it is going to be inflationary because it is

going to hit everybody.

Today we will learn how the Postal Service’s dismal financial

forecast is impacting postal stakeholders, including the mailing

community and the postal work force. The Postal Service is a massive bureaucracy. With about 900,000 employees, the Postal Service

has the second largest work force of any company in the United

States. I think the only one bigger is Wal-Mart. Labor costs account for almost 80 percent of the agency’s budget. The GAO has

reported that over the next decade about half of the postal work

force will be eligible to retire. The departure of these dedicated professionals will leave a void in terms of knowledge and experience.

However, their departure also provides the agency with an opportunity to restructure and refocus its massive work force.

Challenges facing the postal community, including mailers and

the postal work force, illustrate the need for comprehensive postal

reform. We must work on a bipartisan basis to produce meaningful

legislation that will ensure universal mail service at affordable

prices for all Americans. We recently sent a letter to the President

requesting the assistance of the White House on this issue. I have

also discussed the need for postal reform with the Secretary of

Commerce, Don Evans.

The postal issue is such a big issue it will affect every segment

of our society. It is an issue that has not yet been raised with the

administration, but we are going to make sure that everybody over

there is made aware of it as quickly as possible so that we can

have the assistance of the White House in putting pressure on all

interested parties to get a solution passed by the Congress. We

have a great opportunity to reform the Postal Service. We have the

attention of all the stakeholders, including the mailers and the

postal employees, management and the American people.

We have with us today a number of distinguished witnesses. On

the first panel, we have representatives of the mailing industry.

Our lead off witness on the panel is former Congresswoman Pat

Schroeder. Pat was a member of the Post Office and Civil Service

Committee and she is now president and CEO of the Association

of American Publishers. On panel II we will hear from postal employee union representatives. I will look forward to hearing from

all of you in just a few minutes.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Burton follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Mr. Davis, if you want to make your opening statement before we run out of time; we still have 111⁄2 minutes on the

clock. So we will recognize you.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I

want to, first of all, thank you for your ongoing commitment to

postal reform. I also want to thank you for calling this hearing

today.

Last month, we had an opportunity to hear from the Postal Service Board of Governors and the General Accounting Office. At that

hearing the witnesses painted a grim picture for the future of the

Postal Service unless postal reform is enacted. In fact, Postmaster

General Henderson suggested that the Postal Service is projected

to have a budget shortfall of between $2 and $3 billion this fiscal

year.

In an effort to cut costs, the Postal Service has frozen fiscal year

2001 postal facility projects. In Illinois alone, some 26 postal

projects have been affected. Additionally, the Postal Service is also

doing exploratory study on the idea of reducing mail delivery from

6 to 5 days. Of course, my constituents expect 6 day mail delivery.

I am pleased, along with Representative John McHugh and Members of the Congressional Postal Caucus, to introduce bipartisan

legislation tomorrow that will address the issue of 6 day mail delivery.

I am also honored that today we will have an opportunity to hear

from other stakeholders, like the mailers, publishers, and postal

unions. The recent action by the Board of Governors to increase

postal rates by an average of 1.64 percent is sure to spark a lot of

conversation. The action by the Board of Governors speaks volumes

for the need to reform the current system. The increase which goes

into effect July 1 is expected to generate an additional $975 million

in revenue. However, we all know that this is no panacea.

In my congressional district alone, the Postal Service plays a

vital role. Aside from the constitutional mandate of binding our Nation together through universal service, the Postal Service employs

over 5,000 people, generates more than $25 million in Federal

taxes and $5 million in State taxes. In addition, one of the biggest

postal customers in the service is located in my district, R.R.

Donnelley and Sons.

It is in the Nation’s best interest to have a viable and stable

Postal Service. We cannot guarantee stability and viability operating on rules that were written in 1970. We have moved into a more

sophisticated and technologically based economy. Therefore, the

rules of the road should reflect these advances in technology.

We have many challenges before us, Mr. Chairman, the energy

crisis, the rise in fuel prices, labor-management issues, and the

need for postal reform. However, I am confident that through your

leadership and with the full cooperation of all of the Members of

the Congress, with an executive branch that understands the problems that we are facing, with the motivated constituency, that we

are going to be able to find a solution to these problems.

So I thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing.

I welcome all of the witnesses and look forward to a rather productive day.

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Mr. BURTON. We really appreciate your interest and input, Congressman Davis. I am looking forward to working with you to find

a solution.

We have about 7 minutes on the clock. I think we will recess for

the vote and then we will come back as quickly as possible to have

final opening statements and hear from our witnesses. So we will

be back in about 10 minutes.

[Recess.]

Mr. BURTON. The committee will be in session.

We heard from Mr. Waxman, Mr. Davis, and myself. We will now

hear from Mr. Otter. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me associate myself

with both your and the ranking member’s remarks in welcoming

our first and second panel today.

I want to draw your attention, prior to beginning my opening

statement, to the stack of mail that is here that I received. It was

2 days mailing out of Idaho, and if we had not had 6 day mailing,

I would not have gotten it in 11 days. But it all came from one little old town in Idaho and it is relative to the Postal Service.

For years the U.S. Postal Service management has touted that

they favor a business-like approach. I applaud that philosophy. But

if they are going to talk the talk, then they must walk the walk.

We all benefit from the services of the Postal Service. But it must

be held accountable. The Postal Service management cannot continue its practices of increasing rates on the consumer when the

Postal Service’s financial problems lie within its own organization—or perhaps inorganization.

It is not right to force and over-tax the American public to continue bailing out the Postal Service’s $3 billion deficits. For too long

the Postal Service has had the opportunity to reduce its debt. For

example, on several occasions the Postal Service has had recommendations made to them on how to reduce cost. Several of

these suggestions could be adopted now. For example, Price

Waterhouse Cooper outlined proposals that would reduce the costs

for the Postal Service by $500 million to $1 billion a year. However,

even after paying the bill to Price Waterhouse Cooper, rather than

heed their recommendations, the Postal Service has ignored them

and refused to change.

The Postal Service has also built and maintained and annual advertising budget of hundreds of millions of dollars despite its monopoly on first class mail. This is a direct conflict for the American

people to subsidize a Government agency to compete with our

friends and neighbors in the private sector.

The new Postal Service rate increases brought on by the Postal

Board of Governors, who voted unanimously to overrule the Postal

Rate Commissioners’ protests, are drastic increases for the Postal

Service to impose on the Americans to make up for inefficiencies

that are solely of its own making. It is unfortunate that men and

women of the U.S. Postal Service are under a management team

that has run this organization into financial chaos. The employees

of the Postal Service deserve and should have better management,

and so should the American people.

Mr. Chairman, it is time for the Postal Service to operate in a

more business-like fashion. It faces financial pressures but the U.S.

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Postal Service can, and must, cut costs, improve productivity, and

become solvent rather than continuing to pass their financial woes

onto an American public. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Otter.

Mr. Clay, do you have an opening statement?

Mr. CLAY. Good morning. I want to welcome the witnesses from

both panels testifying today. I want to especially welcome former

Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder. She gave many years of distinguished service to the House of Representatives.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this second hearing on the U.S.

Postal Service’s uncertain financial outlook. The first hearing, held

of April 4, 2001, provided insight into the planning and projections

of the Postmaster General and the management of the U.S. Postal

Service. Questions were also raised regarding the exceptionally

large deficit projections for the current fiscal year.

The hearing today receives testimony provided by magazine publishers who, of course, are bulk mailers, and the testimony of representatives of those who do such a tremendous job of getting the

mail delivered. Their testimony and ideas will be solicited on a

range of issues. Among them are: the direction and impact of current postal reform, projected postal rate increases, labor-management relations, and the impact of these and additional issues on

their respective organizations and on the country as a whole.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to submit my statement

to the record. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Without objection, so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Mr. Gilman.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend you

for conducting this hearing this morning, another in the series of

our hearings on the Postal Service. I am pleased that the full committee is continuing to devote its time to the current issues facing

our Postal Service. It is imperative that we examine all the factors

leading up to the Postal Service’s current financial projections.

At our April 4th hearing, the committee heard testimony from the Postmaster General reporting the Postal Service losses of $2 to

$3 billion this fiscal year. Furthermore, on May 8th the Postal

Board of Governors announced a postal rate increase. All of this

combined leads to increased costs by mailers and places a work

force of 900,000 employees in flux, all of which can eventually affect all of our constituents.

When I hear the Postal Service suggest that jobs may have to be

cut in order to help control costs, we are all left to wonder how the

Postal Service will maintain the core mission of universal service.

As I noted at the last hearing, there are many reasons we can

point out to answer how the Postal Service has found itself in these

troubled waters—continued decline in volume, insufficient revenues, and electronic communication which they did not properly

prepare for, as we looked at that years ago.

However, these factors have all been foreshadowed by this committee, and our colleague, Mr. McHugh, the gentleman from New

York, while working diligently to bring postal reform before this

committee, was not getting the kind of support that was needed.

Accordingly, it is now time for this committee to fish or cut bait

and to finally approve a reasonable postal reform measure. And

that does not include just closing post offices.

Additionally, the Postal Service must also be prepared to take responsibility for the difficult economic times they now are experiencing. The Postal Service has known for some time the problems of

inefficiency in its system which exist. Both the GAO and the Postal

Service’s IG have repeatedly testified before the Postal Subcommittee on the many difficulties the Postal Service has had in realizing

opportunities of savings.

So we look forward to examining these issues. We look forward

to examining ways to help our Postal Service get on a sound financial footing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Gilman.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am glad

that we are holding this hearing on the Postal Service’s current financial position, the impact of postal loss projections, and the impact on postal business and the postal work force.

At the April 4th hearing, GAO placed the Postal Service’s transformation efforts on their ‘‘High Risk’’ list, so that Congress, GAO,

and others can focus on the postal financial, operational, and

human capital challenges. The Postal Service has projected a deficit of $3 billion. They have attributed the loss of revenue to emails, rising fuel costs, Government regulation, and e-commerce.

Mr. Chairman, there is widespread agreement that reform is

needed for the Postal Service. I have received numerous calls and

packages from my constituents regarding postal reform. In fact, I

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just received a postal reform proposal yesterday from a small businessman in my district outlining a possible solution to the financial

crisis at the U.S. Postal Service.

I agree with the Coalition to Preserve Universal Mail Service

when they recommended that postal reform should project universal service at fair and reasonable prices. The Coalition further stated that the Postal Service should not submit a request for higher

postal rates any time before 2002, nor should it impose service reductions on the American people.

We all want a strong and stable Postal Service. As such, this

committee and Congress will continue to work with the Postal

Service and others to develop a long-range strategic plan that truly

assesses postal reform.

I look forward to the hearing and the testimony of our witnesses.

I hope they will be able to help us examine postal losses in revenues, postal rate increases, deficit in mail volume projections, competition, information technology, and budget forecasting. I thank

you.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Cummings.

Mr. McHugh.

Mr. MCHUGH. Mr. Chairman, let me echo the words of others in

expressing my appreciation for your efforts here to bring what I

think increasingly people are realizing is a very, very troubling

state of affairs with respect to the U.S. Postal Service. I am sure

most people are tired of hearing me talk about this issue. I know

over the past 6 years I have grown weary of my voice. So, with

your consent and the committee’s, I would ask unanimous consent

to enter my full statement into the record.

I would just say, Mr. Chairman, I spent some time yesterday and

this morning reading the testimony and there is a great deal of

talk about the issue of flexibility and the way in which certain provisions in the bill that we first worked on over the past 5 years

now and others have proposed that the Postal Service be afforded

some sort of flexibility. I would just say to the benefit, I hope, of

some in this room, if the events over the past 2 weeks have not

proven to people that the Postal Service today has ultimate flexibility, that the Postal Service today, for better or worse, has total unobstructed rights to set whatever rates they may choose to, I am

afraid those people are beyond instruction.

We have to begin today, for the many interests that are represented in this room, particularly to the interests that Mr. Otter

spoke about and the reading of his letter, the American people, the

more than 800,000 Postal Service employees, to deal with this issue

in a forthright manner. We can talk about the failures of the system, we can talk about the failures of the people within that system. But, ultimately, the failure to act will be upon our heads. This

is our responsibility.

So I would hope that our first hearing and continuing today will

provide some sort of impetus to do what many, many good people,

a good number of whom will be seated at that front table both in

the first and second panel, have been laboring so hard in quiet desperation to achieve over the past 5 years, and that is meaningful

reform that addresses the challenges that the Postal Service meets

and does it in a way that is fair to those against whom it competes,

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but, most importantly, is fair for those who rely upon it, the American people. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John M. McHugh follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. McHugh. And once again, we want

to thank you for all the work you have put forth in this area. Working with you and the rest of the committee, hopefully we will get

a solution.

Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. I will put my remarks on the record, if I may, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I am delighted you are having this

hearing. I think it is a very important hearing. I do not have a

statement.

Mr. BURTON. Mrs. Mink.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to express my appreciation to you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing and for

continuing the pursuit for facts and information concerning this

whole problem of postal service that affects every single individual

in our various constituencies.

I want to welcome all the panelists that have been invited here,

and especially my former colleague, Pat Schroeder, and look forward to her comments.

Mr. Chairman, this whole issue of postal service is a very confounding one in terms of my district. I represent the rural areas

in my State of Hawaii, and it has always been extremely frustrating for me to realize that the term ‘‘universal service’’ does not

apply to almost half of my district. They do not have home delivery.

By universal service, I have always felt that the promise made to

the American family was home delivery. But we do not have home

delivery.

We have post offices, of course. And the idea that some of them

might be closed in these rural communities is very frightening to

the people who live in these remote areas. Now they have to be

able either to walk, and many of them are senior citizens and cannot, or they have to be able to drive a car to the post office which

sometimes is 10 or 15 miles away to pick up their mail. And the

hours that the post office is open in these remote areas is very confining. It is like 8 to noon, or maybe noon to 4, or some hours like

that. And so we have a huge population that has a very, very difficult time even as it is to get their mail at a post office box. Post

office boxes are not easy to come by. They are very limited. Sometimes you have to wait for years to get a box, so you have to share

one with someone. And not only that, Mr. Chairman, you have to

pay for the box. Even if the fee is nominal, like $10 a month, it

is still a fee that they pay that nobody else does for this universal

service.

So I am very confused about this promise of universal service.

And as I look at this whole issue of postal service, I want to make

sure that what the promise to America was is that this service to

every single homeowner in this country was, indeed, universal.

That was really the essence and philosophy of the Postal Service,

that everybody, no matter where they lived, could at least feel the

comfort that the mail would arrive at their place of residence, or

in the case of half of my district, at their post office.

So I look with great interest, Mr. Chairman, at the various implications of the suggestions that are being made. I want you to know

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that I sit here as a rural member of the United States of America

very concerned that this idea of universal service not be prejudiced

in any way and that the people of the remote places in America can

continue to rely on the Postal Service. Thank you very much.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Representative Mink.

Mrs. Morella.

Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you

for this second hearing concerning the uncertain financial future of

the U.S. Postal Service. After 5 years of operating at a surplus and

a comparably minor loss in fiscal year 2000, the Postal Service’s

announcement of a potential $2 billion to $3 billion deficit in fiscal

year 2001 came as quite a surprise to this committee.

Since the committee’s April 4th hearing, the Postal Service has

taken many reactionary steps, like suspending capital improvement

projects, and studying 5 day delivery service, to stabilize its financial outlook. Many of my colleagues and I were recently shocked to

learn that on May 8th the Postal Board of Governors voted unanimously to increase postal rates an average of 1.64 percent, overturning the Postal Rate Commission’s April 10th reaffirmation of

its decision not to raise rates. The April 4th hearing clearly illustrated many factors causing the Postal Service to project losses in

the same calendar year that they have already raised rates. However, additional rate increases and possible cuts in service were

never suggested as the prescription to the Postal Service’s malady.

As I stated in the April 4th hearing, our reliable and affordable

postal service is the hallmark of our Nation’s infrastructure. For

many neighborhoods, the post office plays a more active role in the

fabric of the community than simply providing a facility for the dissemination of the mail.

So today I am eager to hear from the postal stakeholders, those

who are most affected by these sudden shifts in policy and who

have first-hand experience of the challenges facing the Postal Service. I am interested in learning what reforms they feel might be

necessary to preserving this great institution.

Mr. Chairman, you have a great line up of people who are going

to be testifying on both panels. Some of us will be back and forth

on the Foreign Operations bill on the floor of the House right now.

But I particularly want to acknowledge and also thank my former

colleague Pat Schroeder for being here on the first panel. Thank

you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mrs. Morella.

Vice Chairman Barr.

Mr. BARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me echo the sentiments of other committee members in thanking you not just for

this hearing today, but for your pattern of conducting regular and

consecutive oversight hearings on issues.

I notice in today’s Wall Street Journal that Senator Thompson of

Tennessee, in referring to the problems with the Postal Service,

says ‘‘It is obvious that the ox is in the ditch big time.’’ Mr. Chairman, that may very well be true. And if it is, the last person we

want trying to remove the ox is Rube Goldberg. Now I know I run

the risk that a lot of young people do not know who Rube Goldberg

was, but I know the chairman does and a lot of the folks here do.

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In looking through the statements today, I find one of the more

revealing and very accurate statements in the testimony of Mr.

Sombrotto, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers

of AFL–CIO. In his very first page of his prepared remarks, he

notes something that I think ought to catch the attention of all of

the folks, not just on this committee but who are here today and

who are in charge of trying to resolve these problems. He draws attention to the fact that the legislation under which the Postal Service operates and the framework within which it is trying to come

to grips with the problems that face it is more than 30 years old.

That legislative mechanism, the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970,

predates even the notion, much less the implementation, of the

Internet and other advanced electronic communications.

I think it is more than time for us to take a look at the underlying legislation. I cannot imagine that those involved directly in this

process, the Governors and the other individuals involved with the

Postal Service, would not wholeheartedly join in that effort to take

a look at the legislation which is woefully outdated and work with

us to revitalize the mechanism within which the Postal Service operates.

It is not enough any longer to say that we have the best delivery

service anywhere in the world. We do. And many of us, myself included, have lived and worked and travelled in other countries and

we know first-hand that is true. But that is no longer enough to

get us just by saying we have the best postal service in the world.

The Postal Service has very serious problems. It is failing within

the framework put together by our Government more than 30 years

ago to meet the challenges of the Internet Age.

That is why I commend you, Mr. Chairman, other members of

this committee, for beginning the very, very hard, but I believe absolutely essential, process of taking a new look at this legislation,

making sure that we do not have Rube Goldbergs hiding out there

in the mechanism somewhere, and in doing this to help the Postal

Service and help not only American households who would not understand the logic, as we do not either, of saying, gee, the best way

to meet these challenges is to cut back service, which is what we

considered at the hearing last month. I hope that one has been put

to bed and, as Steve Forbes said, ‘‘beheaded, buried, burned, and

a stake driven through its heart so it is never to rise again.’’

The solution to meeting the challenges posed by higher energy

costs, competition from other entities is not to cut back service, it

is not to make yourself even less desirable. We need to look at

other more innovative ways. And I salute those such as Mr.

Sombrotto and others that we will be hearing from today for recognizing that and urging us to move in the direction of modernization rather than sticking our head in the sand. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Barr.

Before we recognize the first panel, let me just say that a number of the interested parties have, at our request, been holding get

togethers and meetings to see where they can find common ground

to make recommendations to this committee on a legislative proposal to deal with this problem. And I would urge all of the people

who are interested, which is just about everybody, especially the

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main groups to sit down together when you have the time, and we

will be happy to meet with us if you so choose, and send us any

recommendations you have so we can put all of that in the mix

when we are drafting legislation to deal with this. Of course, Mr.

McHugh’s H.R. 22 will be one of the keystones in that formulation.

We will now welcome the first panel. Former Congresswoman

Pat Schroeder, Jerry Cerasale, John Campanelli, John Estes, and

Gene Del Polito. We have a practice of swearing everybody in. So

if you would please stand and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. BURTON. Please be seated.

We will now recognize the Honorable Pat Schroeder for her opening statement. If you could, Congresswoman Schroeder, you remember this, if you could keep your remarks to 5 minutes, we

would sure appreciate it.

Thank you.

STATEMENTS OF PAT SCHROEDER, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS; JERRY CERASALE, BOARD MEMBER, MAILERS

COUNCIL, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, DIRECT MARKETING

ASSOCIATION, INC.; JOHN C. CAMPANELLI, PRESIDENT, R.R.

DONNELLEY LOGISTICS; JOHN T. ESTES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MAIN STREET COALITION FOR POSTAL FAIRNESS; AND

GENE A. DEL POLITO, PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION FOR POSTAL COMMERCE

Ms. SCHROEDER. Thank you very much. And I really want to

compliment you and the committee. I think this attendance is

amazing and it says everybody is very, very concerned about the

status of the Post Office. So thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your

leadership and the leadership of others on this committee for having this hearing and for inviting me to testify.

I, in my life after Congress, am now head of the Association of

American Publishers, which basically represents the majority of

book publishers in America. We have profits and nonprofits. We

mail Bibles, we have textbooks, we have medical journals, you

name it, whatever is out there it is in our membership. And we are

terribly concerned about what has been going on. That is why I am

here today. We love books. Books R Us. We think that we should

have been part of this educational-cultural-scientific-information

clause that the Congress had put in the Postal Reform.

Yet, we were terribly surprised during the last rate increase to

find out we were not. To really explain why it is dramatic, I

brought a chart. Visuals are always wonderful. Look at the black

line, there would be two kinds of similar book mailings that people

might have used during the last 10 years. We basically use the

Bound Printed Matter, although a lot of our people use other classes, too, but Bound Printed Matter is the main thing that books use.

So we picked out two random ones. And as you can see, through

the last decade, it went along just keeping up with inflation. But

then, boom, launch, launch. There it goes. And now we have the

news the rate might go up even more. We got this average of 18

to 36 percent increase and then we got the message that there will

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probably be another 15 percent increase, that means as much as

a 50 percent hike on books.

Now this Congress has cared so much about education, about

reading, about having printed matter in the home. The year of the

brain went on and on about children who start school, who have

books in the home, who are around printed matter, and who have

people reading to them do much better. I know all of you have been

involved in many, many, many of the literacy efforts of the administration. Everybody is concerned about America’s literacy rate

which has looked awful for a very long time. One of the solutions

we know is to get books into the home. One of the ways to do it

is to get them there through the mail. And yet, we are really pricing them out. Somebody is going to have to pay for this, either the

consumer or someone, or people will not purchase them. It is just

that simple.

We have worked hard on ‘‘Get Caught Reading.’’ We appreciated

many people here working with us. But I think all of us know we

have to do everything that is possible. We just saw the latest studies come in about fourth graders. It was absolutely appalling that

60 percent of fourth graders read at a basic level or below. According to the ‘‘Twilight of American Culture,’’ there are 120 million

adults who only read at a fifth grade level. We know kids now

spend 12 times as much time in front of a TV set as they do reading. I could go on and on. Books. We think books.

We were surprised because in this rate case, we thought being

part of the educational, cultural, scientific, and information rate

they would take that into account, which they did not. They also

went on to say during the rate case, ‘‘Oh, but you have many more

costs in this class, that is why we are having to raise it.’’ And we

would say,‘‘What costs?’’ ‘‘Well, we cannot show them to you.’’ There is no transparency. You are fighting a 2 ton marshmallow.

You punch it and it punches you back and you have no idea what

is in it because they will not tell you what the costs are. If you

order books on the Internet through Amazon, or Barnes and Noble,

or Borders, you will find most of them now are using private services because the Postal Service is pricing themselves out. Look, this

affects so many book clubs. This affects children’s book clubs. Even

Dolly Parton mails 10,000 books a month to children in her area

who are between the ages of zero and 5 because she thinks it is

that important.

One of the things I think is essential, because I have spent so

much time in this area having been on the Post Office and Civil

Service Committee and having sat through many of these hearings,

is we do not need another Postal Rate Commission hearing this

summer. I think what you are doing is absolutely right on target.

Thank you for writing the President and the Secretary of Commerce and getting everyone involved because we really need to

delay the rate commission till we get some reforms done. Everybody says, ‘‘we have got to reform, but, oh, not that one, and not

this one, and just do something but not that.’’ This is an emergency. In every single nation, if you cannot protect your borders

with a military, if you cannot deliver the mail to people, if you do

not have a strong currency, what is a country about? This is absolutely essential. So having universal service, being able to do this

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is critical. I think if you just continue to allow it to hemorrhage

with more and more rate increases and not getting essential reform

done, we will be right back here next year. It will just go on and

on. So, thanks for calling attention to the problem.

I also think there is a way to phase in the rate increase so you

do not chase more and more people out of the system. Now more

and more books are being chased out of the system. I guess I could

give you all sorts of things that we could do. My 5 minutes are up.

But I do think it is very, very important that we look at many options. We are ready to do it. We are ready to work with you any

way we can. And we thank you once again.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Schroeder follows:]

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Mr.BURTON. Thank you, Representative Schroeder. And as I said

before, any recommendations that you have that we could put in

the mix, we would sure appreciate.

Mr. Cerasale.

Mr. CERASALE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members

of the committee. It is a pleasure to be here and be invited to

speak. I am Jerry Cerasale and I am on the Board of Directors of

the Mailers Council. It is a pleasure to be sitting here next to one

of our distinguished trustees. In another life, I am the senior vice

president for Government Affairs for the Direct Marketing Association. But I am here today on behalf of the Mailers Council.

We are a pretty diverse group. We represent 70 percent of all the

mail in the United States carried by the U.S. Postal Service. We

are so diverse that any recommendation that you might have on

postal reform you will have members of the Mailers Council support it. You will also have members of the Mailers Council oppose

it. Our membership agrees that there should be postal reform, they

just do not necessarily agree on what is the answer to postal reform.

But we do agree on something that we think is very important

for the Postal Service, and that is cost control. A major ingredient

of cost control is productivity and productivity improvement. We

think that the Postal Service has not done well. As we look at Total

Factor Productivity from 1972 to 1998, we find the Postal Service

has increased productivity by 9.1 percent, which is not very good.

And most of that increase came before the 1991 recession. Historically, the Postal Service has focused on productivity and improved

it. But the focus has not remained and things have slipped.

So the Mailers Council decided that we wanted to try and get a

constant focus on postal productivity improvement. So we developed the Mailers Council Quarterly Report Card on Postal Service

Productivity. The first of which was released on Monday and the

results are on the chart over on the right. We hope to highlight

with this report card both the positive and negative trends in productivity in the Postal Service very early to encourage continued efforts where things are going well and to begin immediate action to

correct problems that we see.

We chose for this productivity report card quite a few measures.

Because no measure is perfect, we think that a diverse number of

measures will likely show, that basket will show correct and accurate trends. We also at the Council wanted to try and measure different functions independently so we can try and show management areas where they can focus efforts to improve productivity.

As we look at the grades on the chart, the first set are internal

productivity grades. That is taking a look at improvements within

the Postal Service. We chose some areas to try and get, as I said,

a long-term and diverse view. Revenue per work hour, D+; volume

per work hour, we give them a grade of D+; unit labor costs, C;

mail processing is a B, very good. We were encouraged by that.

That shows what has happened with all the efforts by the Postal

Service in machinery and so forth to help improve the productivity

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resent both a mid-term and short-term view of Postal Service productivity recently.

We also wanted to use a benchmark and tried to pick some private sector areas in productivity and compare the Postal Service

with them. The grades shown here in the next four are not grades

of the private sector, but Postal Service compared with the private

sector. And they are in the C and C-range, representing that the

Postal Service has not done as well as we would hope that they

would do.

We are also concerned with salary limits on Postal Service managers. We would like to see if we can lift those to try and help the

Postal Service attract and retain talented leaders that are needed

in this time. But we would urge that any additional compensation

be also tied to productivity increases at the Postal Service.

The recent events—the two rates cases in 6 months, the threat

of another rate filing soon—are proof of the need for the Postal

Service to improve productivity. Using the William and Mary system, in which I have invested a great deal of my disposable income

recently, the Postal Service measures a 1.8 GPA. We need some

4.0s in order to really improve the situation at the Postal Service.

And the real factor in this is not the first column with the grades,

it is those empty three columns. We need to see improvement consistent up through there, and we hope that you look forward to seeing these quarterly reports as much as we do.

Thank you very much. I am willing to answer any questions you

have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cerasale follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Cerasale.

Mr. Campanelli.

Mr. CAMPANELLI. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of

the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and certainly was encouraged by your opening statements. My name is

John Campanelli and I am president of R.R. Donnelley Logistics,

which is a business unit of R.R. Donnelley and Sons Co. The company is an integral part of the U.S. direct mail marketing industry,

which contributes over $1.5 trillion annually to our economy and

is responsible for employing over 10 million Americans.

Both my oral and written statement focus on three basic points.

First, what we see as the future mission of the U.S. Postal Service

and the essential elements of postal legislative reform that will enable this new, more tightly focused mission. Second, a review of

what the Postal Service can and must do under current law authority to position itself for reform and continued viability. And third,

what the Postal Service should avoid doing as it moves forward.

As the largest single consolidated user of the Postal Service outside of the Federal Government, my company has a significant

stake in assuring the continued viability of America’s postal system. Our views on postal reform can be summarized as strongly

supporting the continuation of reasonably priced universal mail

service. We share our customers’ and your constituents’ need for a

distribution channel that will service every residential and commercial address every day with predictability and reliability.

While we are obviously concerned about the future, I also want

to state our serious concern about the present situation facing the

Postal Service. The combination of rate increases of the past 6

months, along with the additional rate case that has been announced for filing sometime in the near future, is just unacceptable

for the Postal Service’s customers and will likely do more harm

than good to the Postal Service bottom line.

Let me turn briefly to discuss the future mission of the Postal

Service that can guide reform. First and foremost is enhancing the

Postal Service’s historic core competency in last-mile delivery to the

home and office. The ‘‘last mile’’ core competence begins with the

local post office, the local delivery unit goes to the home and office,

and back. This kind of well-defined focus requires that the Postal

Service does have the ability to change to market conditions and

presents policymakers also with a threshold test question that they

can use in evaluating the impact of a given provision upon reform;

namely, will this provision help the Postal Service to leverage the

scale and scope it currently enjoys in the ‘‘last mile’’ delivery network.

In addition, legislative reform also requires that we recognize the

human side of the change equation. This means the postal employee and management organizations must have a meaningful

place in the reform process. If reform ultimately affects employment, it also must include measures to mitigate the impact that

any potential change has on employees.

Similarly, there is a serious and legitimate debate between the

Postal Service and the private sector competitors on how to assure

fair rules of competition between a Government agency fulfilling an

important public policy goal such as universal service and a private

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competitor seeking to fulfill an equally valid commercial objective.

Certainly, my company does not want the Postal Service to be able

to unfairly compete with the private sector. Conversely, undue restrictions upon the Postal Service can only limit consumer choice

and is unworthy of reform and harmful to the continued viability

of the Postal Service in providing uniform-priced universal service.

While reform is needed to achieve these goals, the Postal Service

should not wait for legislative reform to realize the increased efficiency from its delivery network, as pointed out by Jerry in the Report Card. Certainly, any effort to increase the efficiency by actions

permitted under current law would not eliminate the need for current reform. On the contrary, such actions will have the effect of

better positioning the Postal Service to leverage the gains that reform can offer. In particular, acting now could enable the Postal

Service to permanently avoid large upstream capital investments

in plant and equipment that may well become stranded due to new

alliances, new work-sharing opportunities, and the mix change in

the mail itself in the coming years. In my written statement, I have

included several ideas that are possible and, in fact, overdue under

current law.

What the Postal Service should avoid doing in the future, and I

fully recognize the Postal Service finds itself in difficult financial

straits, the imposition of additional rate increases that are several

times the rate of inflation, at a time when most businesses in the

country are going through severe belt-tightening exercises, has a

potential to do far more harm than good and provides no long-term

benefit. More importantly, such rate increases are clearly inconsistent with the objectives of the Congress, the administration, and the

private sector in revitalizing our Nation’s economy. Rather than

continually raising rates, the Postal Service should follow the lead

of the private sector in reducing costs as rapidly as possible.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the U.S. Postal Service is an integral part of our Nation’s communications and commercial infrastructure. While the future may be uncertain, the economic importance of the Postal Service is unmistakably clear. You and your colleagues are to be congratulated and commended for bringing the

proper attention to this issue to Congress, the administration, and

to our Nation. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Campanelli follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Campanelli.

Mr. Estes.

Mr. ESTES. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to address you and the members of the committee. Our

written statement tells you who Main Street is and what it is

about. Quite briefly, we represent consumers, business and trade

publishers, religious publishers, technology and communications

companies, large and small newspapers, and financial institutions.

These groups yesterday placed in the ‘‘Washington Post’’ a statement of what they believe postal reform should do and what postal

policy should be. With your permission, I would like to offer that

ad as a part of the record for the committee.

Mr. BURTON. Without objection. I would like to see that as well.

Mr. ESTES. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make five points. First,

it is really not our intention to rehash Main Street views on postal

reform as those were embodied in H.R. 22. We briefly mentioned

our views with respect to H.R. 22 in order to orient the full committee about where we were coming from and why we felt from a

policy standpoint many of the provisions, but not all, of that bill

were not in our best interest nor represented a viable approach for

the Postal Service. We recognize that there was disagreement.

There were those that embraced that bill and there were some, like

us, that did not.

But rather than go over that again, we really welcome your opportunity, the opportunity extended to us to look at a new approach. That will involve H.R. 22, we realize that, and it will involve other things. So we are looking forward to that, and we thank

you for that opportunity.

Second, Mr. Chairman, the Postal Service problems today we

think are really in two facets. There is developing a long-term solution which is critical, I think we all agree to that, and there is also

the necessity to develop a short-term temporary fix. I would cover

the long-term approach in a second. But with respect to the shortterm approach, we think, Mr. Chairman, that the committee, you,

should rely heavily on the efforts of the General Accounting Office

initiatives, also on frequent consultation with GAO by this committee coupled with aggressive oversight of the Postal Service by this

committee.

The short-term goals we believe are first. Imperatively and critically look at the facts. Since 1995 through 2000, Postal Service revenues and Postal Service volume has increased. It has been a

steady trend. That is a good, solid fact. We are faced with something now, how serious is that that we are faced with now, and

how much out of synch is that with the overall trend for the last

5 years of the service, we have to get to the bottom of that and we

have to look at it. It is not just enough to look at a few facts in

isolation in our judgment.

A second point on the short-term solution, Mr. Chairman, we

think it is essential to insist on a limited mission for the Postal

Service now, this is on a short-term fix, so we can get our arms

around this and really find out what is going on over there from

the standpoint of financial management and cost control.

And last, we think immediate improvements are essential for financial forecast. The financial forecasting is not that good over

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there and we think something has to be done. GAO has recognized

that, too.

Our third point, Mr. Chairman, you asked for things that jump

out at us. Three things do.

Labor costs. We have stressed at length in our statement about

labor costs and how we think they should be addressed and some

of the problems that the union and the Service faces. Historically,

the unions gave up the right to strike. That is a big thing for a

union to give up. In return for that, they got compulsory arbitration. Is that a good approach or not? But there is quid pro quo

there and a tradeoff. And that was done knowledgeably with an effort to try and find a solution to the labor problems back in 1965.

Mr. Chairman, another thing we set out as a major challenge is

rate-setting.

And third, something has to be done we think about management compensation; that is high level, top level compensation at

the Service. As you said and as others on the committee have said,

this is one of the biggest organizations in the world. And from a

comparability standpoint, if we are going to attract qualified people

that have the experience that is needed, we have to look at the

compensation package that is being extended. We think it is inadequate.

Mr. Chairman, we have called for a Presidential commission to

assist you with respect to developing a national reform program.

We applauded your effort in your letter to the President. We think

you probably did not have a commission in mind. We hope you

would rethink that and look at it. We think it will be helpful.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, my fifth point is we are here to help. We

want to be a part of the team and we want to find a solution. It

is critical for all of us. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Estes follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Estes.

Mr. Del Polito.

Mr. DEL POLITO. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the

privilege and the opportunity to appear before you today on the

issue of postal reform. You have my written statement and I would

just like to add a few thoughts to it.

First of all, I have got to tell you I am delighted they took down

that report card. The last time I saw a report card that bad was

the one I had to turn into my parents in my senior year in high

school. It just evoked bad memories.

I speak in my testimony about the incentives that underlie the

Postal Service, and I characterize them as misdirected. Now I deliberately chose not to characterize them as good or bad because

such value judgments really do not work, do not matter. The only

issue is whether or not the incentives that are laid before people

get them where they need to go and get them to do the kinds of

things that they should be doing. Clearly, when you take a look at

the incentives that underlie today’s postal system, which, incidentally, stem from the Postal Reorganization Act itself, they are not

working for an institution that now must find its way within a

competitive environment.

So, in other words, if you want to change the way the Service’s

stewards behave, you have got to do something to change the incentives that underlie postal law. Because if you do anything less

than that, you will fail to achieve meaningful postal reform. Getting the incentives right is going to be the key to postal reform.

Now around the time of my son’s first birthday, he began to show

signs of his autism. That started our family down a long and arduous road for his rehabilitation. And much of the work that we

ended up having to do with him was based on a behavioral training

method that clearly laid out the rewards and the consequences of

his responses to various learning tasks. Now he is 11 and he is

doing fine. He has learned extremely well that there are rewards

for working hard and there are consequences for slacking off. When

he does well he earns a Nintendo time. When he goofs off he loses

his Nintendo privileges.

Clearly, a child who began life with so debilitating a disability

was able to learn very, very quickly how to respond to the incentives that were set before him. Why then some people have such

a hard time appreciating that adults who do not have such disabilities will not learn to behave in accordance with the incentives before them to me is just an absolute mystery.

So again, to sum up, if you want to reform the Postal Service,

you have to change the incentives that drive the behaviors of the

people who operate the system. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Del Polito follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Del Polito. That was very concise.

Let me start off by saying to Mr. Estes, we do not oppose a Presidential commission, but time is of the essence and I am not sure

that commissions work in a real timely fashion. Usually, by the

time you formulate the commission you are into 6 months, 3

months, 4 months, and then by the time they come back with a report you have got another 6 months, and then by the time it is published and everything it is well over a year before you have something. And I am not sure we have that luxury of time. That is why

I have asked everybody that is concerned to give us suggestions on

how we can improve on, if possible, H.R. 22 or add to it and come

up with short-term solutions and a long-term plan that is going to

maintain the viability of the Postal Service. So that is the first

thing that we would like to have.

We are going to be meeting with the Board of Governors, at least

some of the leaders on the Board of Governors, in the next week.

And if any organization that is interested has suggestions on shortterm solutions to the problem, I would like to have those so I could

present those to the Board of Governors and ask them to take a

hard look at those, especially anything that is a business-like solution to the problem. If there are ways that they can streamline or

make the Postal Service effective in the short run, we would like

to have those suggestions.

I would like to know from all of you, and I think you alluded to

it a little bit in your opening statements, how the rate increase of

January 7th affected your companies and your employees, and how

you think the scheduled rate increase that is going to go into effect

on July 1st will affect you. And also, if the Postal Service, if the

Postal Rate Commission and the Board of Governors go along with

it, if they have a huge rate increase, what that will do to you.

We will start with you, Ms. Schroeder.

Ms. SCHROEDER. Thank you. I think I addressed that very clearly. And that is, clearly, somebody has got to pay. What it really will

do, I think, is cut down the number of books that are going into

homes. And I just think, at a time when we are focusing on literacy, that would be disastrous.

Mr. BURTON. So it is just going to be incrementally worse.

Ms. SCHROEDER. Absolutely. I think it will.

Mr. BURTON. And it is going to cause an inflationary trend in the

cost of books being sent through the mail.

Ms. SCHROEDER. Absolutely.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Cerasale.

Mr. CERASALE. Well the Mailers Council has 70 percent of the

mail but I think the thoughts are we probably put in 90 percent

of the revenue. So that the $1 billion increase that is coming on

July 1st will be $900 million coming from Mailers Council members. It will hurt them. You have rates that have gone up above

the rate of inflation. And looking at the rumored rate increase

being filed that will be above the rate of inflation again, this will

significantly increase the cost of doing business, both in catalogs,

in magazines, in financial institutions, sending out bills, etc. There

is going to be I am sure some significant pressure to try to find alternative means to try and avoid these rate increases.

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Mr. BURTON. Do you think that it will drive people to paying bills

through the Internet and things like that, thus reducing the revenues to the Postal Service?

Mr. CERASALE. I am sure it will. Clearly, it has already begun.

I think the softness in first-class mail volume is due in part to the

competition and in part to the rates that are there. Business-tobusiness, many businesses are moving to a paperless billing system. I think if costs keep going up for postage that we are going

to see major pressure and efforts to try to get individuals to move

to a paperless payment system.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Campanelli.

Mr. CAMPANELLI. Mr. Chairman, most of our customers establish

a fixed budget for printing, distribution, mailing, etc. So when the

cost per piece goes up they simply reduce the pieces, whether they

be books, magazines, catalogs, that they send out. Generally, that

impacts prospecting and trying to generate new business.

I also think that the other impact right now from an economic

perspective is in technology and information technology and the

Internet. That with the focus in industry turning from potentially

creating new markets to webifying companies to drive cost out,

that an area of increased postage going up will just have companies

look at ways to use technology to off-set those costs, to bring those

costs down. So in the near-term industry will be looking at

webifying the business, using the Internet, using technology to

drive out costs and that specifically will impact mail volume. I

think, beyond that, the Postal Service could learn a lesson from

that as well and focus their technology efforts on making it easier

to do business and using technology to take out costs.

Mr. BURTON. So what I gather from what you are saying is that

it is like a car company that was losing market share to raise the

price of the car only guarantees more losses. And with the competition that is now apparent, which was not apparent 20 years ago

or 30 years ago, the competition of the Internet and other services

provided from other companies, if the Postal Service continues to

raise rates, they are going to continue to lose market share.

Mr. CAMPANELLI. That is absolutely right. I have not seen any

chip manufacturers raising their rates recently.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Estes.

Mr. ESTES. Mr. Chairman, the business-to-business periodicals

industry, which we represent through the American Business

Media, in the past decade their postal rates have increased by 60

percent. That is in the past 10 years. The religious periodicals, who

we also represent, now have as part of their budgets 20 to 22 percent going for postage. The amazing thing is that in this last action

by the Governors the average postage increase for business-to-business periodicals went up 2.6 percent, but for the religious periodicals it went up 2.9 percent. And this is a business, so to speak, that

does not carry advertising. It comes out of their contributions from

their churches and whatnot. So they are being hit very hard right

now. And last, the banking industry, who we also represent, for the

last year that we had a survey, that was 1999, their total postage

costs were $2.6 billion annually. The action taken by the Governors, as you pointed, kept the stamp the same but raised the second ounce to I think 23 cents. That action alone will cost the bankVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00289 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\75418.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing industry annually $52 million. So on three of the members we

represent, that is the bottom line.

Could I say just one thing about the commission aspect. We

would hope that any commission, if any commission ever develops,

that there would be a deadline, like 10 months or something like

that, and we put that in our paper.

Mr. BURTON. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Estes.

Mr. Del Polito.

Mr. DEL POLITO. Everybody else seems to have done a credible

job in terms of documenting the disaster. I could add my own stories but it probably would not add anything to your knowing. But

what I think you need to appreciate is that what they also have

cost themselves with their customers is a tremendous amount of

good will has been poured down the sewer.

I have never in my entire career in the postal community, which

is now 18 years, seen people react to what they perceive to be the

approach of the Board of Governors and the management of the

Postal Service with such anger. If I have to hear one more time in

any venue out of a postal service manager’s mouth ‘‘We are going

to go ahead and raise your rates because you have got no place else

to go,’’ the bottom line they need to appreciate is increasingly in

the future people will have a place to go. If they are looking for a

fiscal crisis to be able to act as the crutch for postal reform, they

are about to get it big time.

They have got a key decision in front of them relative to what

they do in July. If they file for a postal rate increase of any magnitude before the beginning of the next year, they are going to be

making a tragic, tragic mistake. And, quite frankly, mailers are

tired of being the monkey in the middle between games to be

played between the Postal Service and the Postal Rate Commission

over the fine points of the law that increasingly has become an

anachronism.

It is nice to be able to hear that after 6 years people finally begin

to agree that postal reform is a necessity. Now it is time to get it

done.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you. Before I go to Mrs. Mink, let me just

say that I would like to have excerpts of this, we are video taping

this, I would like to have excerpts put on a tape so I can give it

to the Board of Governors next week.

Mrs. Mink.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Cerasale, was it, of the Mailers Council, I looked through

your testimony and I am struck by that paragraph in which you

said that you have repeatedly asked to have an opportunity to sit

with the Board of Governors and that this request has consistently

been denied. What is the basis for that denial? Is it statutory, or

is it simply some rule that they have adopted on their own that

places them above the public?

Mr. CERASALE. It is not statutory, it is not really a rule that they

have passed either. It is a policy that they follow. I can understand

some of it. To a certain extent, they are a part-time board and to

meet every single mailer they would use up all their time. However, we think that from the Mailers Council standpoint, we repVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00290 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\75418.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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resent such a huge percentage of their customers, that it would be

worthwhile for them to meet with us.

We had one meeting with a group of mailers with the chairman

and vice chairman of the Board, and they at least expressed a desire to continue having these meetings periodically. So that we may

have finally made a crack in the door of the Board that is running

a service organization meeting with its customers.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you very much. Maybe they knew about this

hearing today.

Mr. CERASALE. That is a possibility.

Mrs. MINK. Congresswoman Schroeder, as you know, tomorrow

we will be debating on the floor the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. A large component of that legislation has to do with the concern of the President and his administration, all the teachers, and people that are involved in analyzing

public education today and why Johnny cannot read after the third

grade. So we have weighed in tremendous resources for this campaign on literacy and reading and adequacy of the instruments

given to teachers so that they are qualified to teach reading.

And in your testimony, you raise this specter of crippling what

we are trying to do in our legislation to encourage the distribution

of books and adequacy of our libraries and so forth by indicating

that these rate increases that attack your particular membership

is going to severely limit the publishing industry from getting these

books out to the very people we want to assist. Where will the industry go to if the Postal Service insists upon these rate increases

that will price you out of relying upon the Postal Service for this

distribution?

Ms. SCHROEDER. Thank you so much for your question, Congresswoman Mink, because this is really what troubles me. There are

many book clubs for children. Obviously, postage is a very key part

of it. We do not know even how to price books if they are going to

continue with 50 percent postage increases every year, and companies are not even going to offer them in the future if they end up

having to absorb all these additional costs that they did not predict. How do you put out a business plan?

Now I would rather talk about reading than the business plan,

but we are not going to get the reading material to the children if

there is no business model that allows a company to stay in business that is doing that. And that is really where we are. A business

person cannot predict what the costs are going to be when you saw

that chart going straight up. They want to get stuff out to children

but parents do not have a lot of money and so you want to keep

it as low as you possibly can.

I think it is a tax on reading. I really do. And in the reform legislation this Congress passed when you were here, it very clearly

said that should be taken into account, that the cultural issues, the

educational issues, the scientific and information should be taken

into account. It was not taken into account at all. They really

whapped books. We are very concerned about what happens to

those children’s reading programs and adult reading programs that

are out there.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you very much.

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Mr. Estes, I think I have time for another question, in your testimony you made mention of the encroachment of the Postal Service

into the electronic industry and establishing various partnership

arrangements. You level some criticism on this movement and

made a statement that the taxpayers, in fact, were being pushed

into this particular partnership because we in essence pay for most

of the revenues that the Postal Service receives. Can you elaborate

on precisely what the Postal Service has done in your view that is

an encroachment on their primary mission.

Mr. ESTES. Yes, Congresswoman. The problem that we see the

Postal Service facing is one of getting into the private sector where

we do not believe they should be. They ought not to be competing

with private sector organizations, who are doing a good job. Now

they have started up new ventures—e-mail ventures, e-bill pay

ventures, with the American Express Co. a check fulfillment process, several others. Those have lost money. That money has to be

made up somewhere from the revenue stream. And the revenue

stream that is most often used to make up money is from the firstclass revenue stream. And that is what we are really addressing

here.

Basically, our concern is that the Postal Service as such, as a

Government agency, a quasi Government agency, ought not to be

in the business of starting up private sector ventures in competition with the private sector.

Mrs. MINK. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mrs. Mink.

Mr. McHugh.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me express my appreciation particularly to the individuals sitting at the front table

who, in the case of John, and Gene, and Jerry, especially, were so

actively involved in this process. Obviously, their presence here

today reflects their continuing concern. And I am not sure why

they have gone through what they have over the past several years

and are still voluntarily here today. I am not sure we subpoenaed

them, did we? No? [Laughter.]

They are here voluntarily, and my compliments to all of you.

Mr. Estes, you made a comment back in March 1999 before our

subcommittee and I want to read it to you. ‘‘We often hear the

warning that it would be unwise to wait until the Postal Service

is broken to fix it. But without evidence of present or eminent

breakage, such as declining volume or revenue trend lines over a

representative period of time,’’ you then reference H.R. 22, ‘‘demands for change rest on little more than conjecture.’’ Would you

like to update that statement?

Mr. ESTES. You are referring to the situation today with respect

to——

Mr. MCHUGH. That is why we are here, sir.

Mr. ESTES. Right. Yes, sir, I can. As I mentioned a minute ago,

the last 5 years have been pretty good with respect to volume and

revenue. In looking at the data for this year of 13 accounting periods, we are now through 8 of them, and as a result of those 8

through 13 accounting periods, the revenue for the Postal Service

is down from budget 1.8 percent, the volume is over budget by 0.9

percent, and the expenses are off by 0.1 percent. Those, to our way

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of thinking, Mr. McHugh, represent a trend, or maybe there’s a

modification.

Mr. MCHUGH. I appreciate your qualified yes. Can we agree, and

we’ve not agreed on a great deal in specific terms, objective wise,

I think we have, can we agree that whatever trend lines, whatever

quarters of fiscal revenues and expenditures may show, the current

system doesn’t work for your members? Wouldn’t the data that you

outlined and Ms. Schroeder and others have suggested, double digit

price increases within the last several months suggest it doesn’t

work?

Mr. ESTES. Yes, we can agree that reform is essential.

Mr. MCHUGH. Then let me just say, you were very gracious in

your comments and deferred remarks about H.R. 22. I have no love

personally for H.R. 22. I told particularly some of the folks at the

front table there and then our second panel, if I have to write a

bill of my own hand, that wouldn’t be it. But I don’t have the only

vote in this House. There are 434 others, as I know Ms. Schroeder

recognizes. And we tried to do something that was passable,

achievable.

You do, however, in your written statement, that will be part of

the record, make some comments and observations about H.R. 22

that I have to tell you are simply incorrect. I commend you for your

continuing interest, for the clarification of the comment you made

earlier with respect to the condition and the crisis of the Postal

Service.

I’m going to ask the chairman for unanimous consent that we

can enter into the record a point-counterpoint of the concerns that

you expressed. Because I think that’s important. If H.R. 22 is a

major part of reform, terrific. If it’s not, that’s fine too. But as you

heard the chairman say, I think it is going to be the focus of a

starting point. So I think it’s important we proceed accurately.

Mr. BURTON. Without objection, that will be put in the record.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And all I’m asking, Mr.

Estes, is that you, when it is submitted, please read it and comment and return, so that we can at least understand each other

based on facts. Is that fair?

Mr. ESTES. Mr. McHugh, yes, it’s fair, and let me just add that

even though we’ve disagreed on some of the substances of what has

been proposed, you and your staff have always been gracious, as

you are now, in listening to our concerns. So yes, it’s eminently fair

as you are.

Mr. MCHUGH. I appreciate that. Because really, what we all need

to do is focus on the future. And Gene Del Polito made some comments about that in his testimony. He’s been a muse of sorts to me

and he continues to be.

What’s important is not what happened yesterday. What’s awfully important is what happens today and into tomorrow. So I’ve

squandered most of my time on that. The good news here is we’ve

dealt with these folks, all of them, and have appreciated their

input. Mr. Chairman, again, my compliments to you.

If this were easy, we would have done it a long time ago. It’s not.

As Jerry said, even amongst his own membership, everyone agrees

on the word reform, but it’s like beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder. But it’s all of our responsibilities now to find a common

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bridge that we can cross that does more good than not. And your

leadership, Mr. Chairman, has been exemplary and I deeply appreciate it. Thank you.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Del Polito, did you have a comment about Mr.

Estes?

Mr. DEL POLITO. I know that Jack remains unconvinced, unless

he sees sufficient trends. But I would ask everyone to keep in

mind, as I had said in my statement, that the fact that the crisis

that the Postal Service is in right now may not be due to electronic

diversion, it’s coming and it’s coming fast. I think everyone should

take to heart the comment that former Postal Rate Commission

Chairman Ed Gleiman shared with me over lunch 1 day in which

he said, you know, we should count ourselves lucky. We’ve gotten

a wakeup call. Because if we pass this one by, we’re going to find

that the crisis is going to be much worse than we ever imagined.

It’s always amazing to see that people will build their houses on

the San Andreas Fault and they’ll be told, it’s going to shake and

the house is going to come down. But they don’t believe it until it

happens. And then you hear the weeping and the gnashing of teeth

after they’re sorry.

Mr. BURTON. I don’t want to have a debate here, Mr. Estes, but

go ahead.

Mr. ESTES. Just a quick comment. The Postmaster General, the

current Postmaster General has indicated that e-commerce is not

that much of a problem. He believes that people stopped writing

letters some time ago. E-mail does not represent a threat to the

Postal Service. I can give you the transcript of that if you’d like to

see it.

The other is that the question of the Internet, Mr. Henderson believes, may be a blessing for the Postal Service, because of the

added business that they will get in shipping and what-not. I can

also make that available. It’s a transcript of a hearing, of some testimony he gave.

Mr. BURTON. I’m not sure I agree with Mr. Henderson.

Mr. Davis was here for questions first. Is that all right? Mr.

Davis has been here I think from the beginning. Mr. Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I

really appreciated the testimony of the panel, all of you. Especially

the passionate testimony or presentation from Representative

Schroeder relative to reading and the importance of it, and the

need to foster it as we try and guarantee further our sense of democracy.

I also detected, though, running through the panel a theme

which essentially said that continued rate increases are going to

have a seriously negative impact on your businesses, and on your

industry. And I certainly can appreciate that. The question that I

would raise in an effort not to be redundant, given this understanding, if you would, what would you propose as alternatives, or

if you have any notions of alternative solutions? Would you be willing to share those with the committee?

Mr. CAMPANELLI. Congressman Davis, to kind of recap some of

my testimony, fundamentally the Postal Service, and I do agree

with Mr. Estes on this, should have a tighter scope and a tighter

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mission. That is again focusing on getting the mails to the home

and mail coming from the home.

There are many options upstream, through negotiated service arrangements, through additional work sharing agreements, and to

have private industry handle a lot of the processing, sortation,

transportation of the mails prior to that last mile that’s effectively

employed now. There are areas, a lot of areas, that can be expanded upon that to take that cost out and to use private industry

to manage that piece of the business.

In addition to that, the areas of information technology also create significant opportunity for taking out time and cost. That is

fundamentally how information gets to the Postal Service about the

mail. And also, I would add to the comment that it’s not so much

the e-mail from the individual users, but it’s the webification of

business and industry and the business mail that’s going to consumers that’s going to cause the erosion of first class mail.

The final point is that in the process, there’s a transformation

going on in the types or shapes of mail. And the Postal Service has

long been pretty good at processing letter sized mail. But as they

get into larger pieces of mail, flats, magazines, catalogs and larger

pieces of mail, that is where they have a lot of inefficiency. Using

industry to move those pieces of mail, do more of the sortation, etc.,

and also within the Postal Service then combining classes of mail

so that we don’t have to treat those pieces of mail, books, magazines, catalogs, moving through the Postal Service independently,

creating redundant infrastructure within the Postal Service to accept certain types of mail. To the extent that we can combine those

and move those together through the Postal Service, we will create

a more efficient Postal Service.

Ms. SCHROEDER. Congressman Davis, may I just add, I think

that’s very important. All of our businesses would probably be gone

if they’d only had 11 percent productivity increase over three decades. The Postal Service invested in all sorts of machinery and

technology to make themselves more productive. But somehow it

didn’t happen. There’s been a real disconnect.

Continuing the focus what you really want, universal delivery, is

very important. That’s what its mission is. Keep it on that. Work

on the productivity. But what you usually find is, whenever you

push somebody, they blame someone else. If you’re going to have

a commission we often found all of the commissions were really a

way to bury the issue of reform. When Congress did the base closing commission which had a date certain and Congress either had

to accept the results or turn them all down, something did happen.

They couldn’t pick and choose.

If it gets to a crisis point where you think you have to have a

commission I think you’re going to have to do, something like the

base closing commission, which I noticed the Wall Street Journal

recommended today. But I think it is absolutely essential we stay

focused on universal service and we get the productivity up far

more than 11 percent over three decades. That’s incredible.

Mr. DEL POLITO. In the terms of the longer term, one of the

things I think you need to be aware of is that there really are a

multiplicity of options from which we could choose in terms of how

you could restructure a postal system in order to be able to have

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it operate more efficiently, cost efficiently and productively. It’s regrettable that each and every time we talk about more significant

structural reforms people choose to characterize it in terms of privatization.

The issue I think that’s important here in terms of redirecting

incentives is not whether or not the private sector owns the enterprise or not, but whether or not the enterprise is structured in a

manner in which it is able to function successfully within a competitive environment. A corporatized Postal Service, one that has

a true stock corporation where 100 percent of the stock is owned

by the Government and where the incentives are appropriately

structured, could do a vastly superior job in satisfying the needs of

the American people, its workers and the businesses that it serves

without necessarily saying that Government has to abrogate its

ownership or responsibility for it.

It’s unfortunate that in many instances, in seeking out alternatives such as the way we’ve attempted to respond to H.R. 22,

that everyone else, everyone wants to be held safe from whatever

the options may be. Everyone wants a guarantee that nothing is

put at risk. That kind of brings to mind the statement that a fellow

by the name of Bayard Ruston gave to my graduating college class

back in 1968, when he turned around and he said, those who actively pursue security lose it.

And if we’re really going to be successful here, when we hear everything needs to be put on the table, we need to be serious about

that. Because if we all seek to be sure that we are insulated from

change, the very thing we seek to avoid we’ll get.

Mr. CAMPANELLI. Representative Davis, I think that from the

Mailers Council, the big key, echoing on Representative Schroeder’s

statement, is the productivity. It doesn’t matter what reform you

may come up with if you have reform. Whatever happens, whatever

piece we have of the Postal Service, be it what it is today or what

it might be in the future, the focus has to be on productivity to improve what’s happening.

As you saw from that report card, even against the private sector, the Postal Service has not fared that well. But the one area

where there was some light was the mail processing, where internally we’ve given it a B on our report card. That stems from,

maybe too late, maybe it took too long, but it stems from a lot of

capital placed into mechanization, placed into automation, trying to

improve the productivity of the Postal Service.

One of the things the Service has done in this crunch time is to

pull back on capital expenditure. That’s a mistake. That is a major

error. They should be moving forward to get more of those Bs and

hopefully As on that report card.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I

know that my time has expired. And I’d just say that I think Bayard Ruston was right then, and he’d probably be right today.

Mr. MCHUGH [assuming Chair]. I thank the gentleman. And let

me state for the record, while he’s in the room, I never like to compliment someone unless they’re here, Mr. Davis has been a leader

over the past several years on the subcommittee when we were undertaking this endeavor. And he continues that leadership. We’re

working very diligently with he and our two staffs, along with the

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chairman, of course, to try to find a bipartisan way to approach

this issue. Because it doesn’t check to see your party registration

before it hits you, as I’m sure all of you know. So I compliment the

gentleman.

Ms. Norton.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I apologize that I wasn’t here to hear your testimony, because

this is an area of great interest to me. Anybody who is interested

in public policy has to be fascinated by this public-private policy dilemma and how to solve it. I listened to your responses and got a

sense of your own suggestions. We had a prior hearing.

I’m struck, and of course it really goes not to what would you do

to reform, but whether we know how to reform this entity. I would

really like to have you address this. You’ve spoken of what

amounts to short term and long term problems. We know about the

long term problems, because even during the flush economy, there

were bills here and they got stuck. They were mostly dealing with

the notion that it was going to get worse and there were all kinds

of problems that really didn’t fit the 1970 bill we passed. Times

have changed.

Now, we’ve got short term economic problems, financial problems

exacerbating the problems that the Postal Service already has. I

am very concerned that as we have these hearings and hear these

suggestions, that we may yet fasten upon some of them. Because

I do not feel yet that I know how to handle this hippopotamus. The

Postal Service Act says that the Postal Service is to be a business.

Of course, there is no business like it. And we are expecting of this

business what we expect of any other business, free collective bargaining, management can change quickly when there are problems,

we don’t have any of that.

Of course, this is a business that is subsidized, so we can’t compete in the ordinary sense of the word. Of course, there are things

that you can’t do in a market economy if you don’t compete. These

are the kinds of dilemmas that I don’t know how to address. Nobody ever thought about technological communication at all when

we passed the 1970 act.

I know that there is an unusual coalition of mailers and employees, and I know what you say. This is my dilemma. You say, no

service reductions. I couldn’t agree more with that. This is your

universal coalition, your universal service coalition, you say, no increases in rates. Couldn’t agree more with that. I consider that

management 101.

Except management 101 goes for the businesses of the kind I’m

most often used to. I don’t know how to handle, you say the products ought to be improved. That’s real vague, particularly since

they can’t, this is what your coalition said, since they can’t compete. So you’d better watch out how you improve your products, because you can improve your products so you’re competing right

with somebody as the Postal Service acted like it was trying to do

for parts of the 1990’s with the private sector.

Then of course, the Congress is going to smack you down and

you’re supposed to promote, watch out about that, too, because

when they promote it, as when they went over to the Olympics and

promoted like any other business, Congress said, what do you

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mean promoting that way? We don’t promote that way. Well, that’s

how private businesses promote. God, I’d hate to be in the Postal

Service and try to figure it out. What are you? What kind of hybrid

are you?

You say eliminate inefficiencies. I’m looking now at what your coalition says, and increased productivity, again management 101.

Every business knows how to do that. The difference is, all the

businesses know how to do it according to management 101, and

we have not created a Postal Service that operates according to

management 101. I am asking whether or not, by asking for short

term bargaining, that’s the part that caught my attention. You

said, don’t let them do any of this. You say don’t let them do any

of this. You say, enable the board of Governors to address short

term cash needs, more appropriately through bargaining rather

than shortsighted strategies.

I’d like you to speak, are you asking for a time out to allow them

to get some money so that they can continue until we find a mechanism to figure out how to do this? Or would you really like Congress to just absorb these suggestions and try to implement them

without a more thorough look at this strange and unique animal?

I am absolutely perplexed as to how to reform.

It is perfectly clear to me that there needs to be reform. You’re

talking about an organization, for example, part of what some in

Congress want to do is get hold of collective bargaining. Better be

careful here. You have got some of the worst labor management relations in the country in the Postal Service. You’ve got violence

among employees in the Postal Service, there’s so much stress

there. You’ve got 125,000 unresolved grievances, a sure sign of a

backlog.

I want to be careful there, too. So if all of you have any easy answers for how we can do one, two, three, four, I want to hear them.

I’m more impressed with your notion that to give them some money

and then let them go about it, then I want to know how do you

go about it, how do we find out which is the right set of reforms

to, in fact, plaster onto this absolutely unique business on the planet?

Ms. SCHROEDER. Congresswoman Norton, as always, you go right

to the core of it. Having listened to this debate for 20 some years

on the committee, I think there are two things that we really have

to lay out there. No. 1, we created a critter like nothing else. It’s

not really private, it’s not really public.

I think we’ve also created a Postal Service that’s almost like the

cowardly lion. They’re really afraid to come and tell the Congress

the real status. OK, OK, we can get along. Let’s face it, about $1

billion is owed the Postal Service by the Government for revenue

foregone, if you really read the statute the way I read it. But

they’re kind of afraid to come ask that, because then they get their

hands whacked.

So part of the problem is, we have to clearly define what the

Postal Service is. I think it has to become a Government agency

that has more accountability to you where we can deal much

straighter. I just don’t think this half and half thing has worked.

I really think we’ve got to be clear about it. I’m glad you said that.

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I don’t think we want to privatize it. Because you may say we

don’t know how to reform it, but we clearly could not privatize this,

either. There is nothing; there’s no model like that. How are you

going to deliver mail not to a country, but to a continent, and still

retain universal service, and the things that every person thinks

that every government should be doing for its citizens, including

me?

This half and half status has caused Congress to be able to

micromanage. It’s caused the Postal Service to be afraid to really

level with us as to what’s going on. And we find it’s even very difficult to have the transparency that you would have if you had a

Government agency. You would be able to have much more public

records, much more information about the costs, much more availability to what’s happened. We’ve been trying to meet with the

Postal Service for 3 weeks and can’t even get in. You know, that

wouldn’t happen, you’d call your Member of Congress.

So I honestly think you’ve got to decide what this beast is. We

created something that doesn’t fit anywhere, it’s kind of imploded

on us.

Ms. NORTON. Does anyone else have any response to that?

Mr. DEL POLITO. I tried to lay down in my statement the fact

that I genuinely believe that what is at ill here and why you get

the curious behaviors that you do out of the Postal Service is because of the way the incentives are structured that cause people to

behave the way that they do.

I’ll just give a very simple one, which was in my statement. They

are now going through the process of trying to identify a new Postmaster General. They probably have already made a selection, and

within the context in which the selection has to be made, I’m sure

they’ve made a good one. But the most we pay the PMG in this Nation is $164,000 and

nobody gets paid more than he or she does. In Germany they pay

their chief executive officer $1 million and he’s got all kinds of

stock options and other ways of increasing and maximizing his income when he makes that institution perform well. The same is

also true of Canada. The Canada Post CEO gets $400,000 a year.

Even the Italian post office pays their CEO $400,000 a year.

When you go looking to try and find out who’s going to bring you

the kind of creative energies and restructuring of incentives to get

people to go forward, you’ve got to ask yourself, do I really want

to take on that level of responsibility for $164,000 a year, but no

matter how well I do, that’s the most I could possibly earn. And

if I screw up, I’m going to have everybody on my back chewing on

my legs telling me what I’ve done wrong.

If you want to change the way they behave, change the incentives in the system.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do hope you’re including more than incentives for pay for the CEO.

Mr. DEL POLITO. Yes, I am. [Laughter.]

Mr. MCHUGH. Well, whoever that candidate was, if they saw

that, they’ve probably withdrawn. [Laughter.]

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I’d like to ask each of you, first, if you

agree that ultimately to solve this problem, you either have to raise

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rates or a combination, cut costs or cut services. And I need to

know, and I buy in totally with the fact that you have disincentives

for logical action. So I’d like to ask each of you what you would do

specifically, without a lot of rhetoric, and tell me which is your

highest priority.

We’ll start with you, Mr. Estes.

Mr. ESTES. Mr. Shays, I think the most important aspect to address is cost cutting and cost management. I refer you to an IG report that’s part of the April—— Mr. SHAYS. No, just right now. I’m not going to dispute that, but

bottom line is, cost cutting. Thank you.

Mr. CAMPANELLI. Well, I’d first start by saying the Postal Service

has already raised rates. So doing it again isn’t the answer. It does

focus on costs. But it is, and a quicker way to get at that is better

leverage private industry to handle more of the upstream processing and invest in the last mile delivery network for the Postal Service, a tighter scope of what they do, and focus on the universal

service, going to the home every day, providing that service.

Mr. SHAYS. Wait a second, wait a second. Do what?

Mr. CAMPANELLI. Again, it would be to focus the Postal Service

on the last mile delivery network, to leverage the scope and scale

that they have that is unparalleled in the country.

Mr. SHAYS. But in giving you some choices, you’re saying we

need to focus on universal service, and that’s going to cut costs?

Mr. CAMPANELLI. With that focus, then take the upstream processing where much of the Postal Service costs and inefficiency is,

and use private industry to do that more effectively.

Mr. SHAYS. But we would cut costs, you’re telling me we would

cut costs by privatizing some of the services?

Mr. CAMPANELLI. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough.

Mr. CERASALE. Mr. Shays, we would say cut costs, of course, improving productivity is a way to try and hold and cut costs. I guess

we should look at the total, not just the costs to the Postal Service

but the total cost of mailers and the Postal Service in trying to deliver things, and we want to try and look at reducing the overall

costs to customers of the Postal Service. It could be their costs as

well as the Postal Service.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Ms. SCHROEDER. Thank you, Congressman Shays. I honestly believe in the whole theory of elasticity and inelasticity, you can’t

raise rates right now on top of what you just did, because you’re

going to lose volume. That only feeds on itself. It’s the first time

they’ve run a deficit after they just raised a rate. So you’ve got a

real issue.

That drives you to costs, that drives you to infrastructure, that

drives you to looking at these higher fees and figuring out how you

streamline it or what you do about it. That’s why I think we’re

here. I also think the Government needs to look at whether they

have lived up to their commitment to the Post Office in revenue

foregone, and whether we fully funded the pension fund, which I

understand is a problem. It’s those types of things that everybody’s

got to look at it.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Del Polito.

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Mr. DEL POLITO. I think first, one of the things they should begin

to look at is the wasteful programs that they still maintain that are

not bringing in revenue. Someone was making references earlier to

some of the e-commercial activities that they’re involved in which

at this point has been a drain on them. Those certainly can be cut.

They should take a look at other elements within their organizational structure that also are relatively non-productive and take

steps to cut back.

No one wants to see the Postal Service not be able to pay its

bills. I think as Ms. Norton tried to raise earlier, yes, we do want

a breathing spell. And that breathing spell means that if you do

need postal rate increases, smaller, more manageable postal rate

increases are obviously a hell of a lot better than having to swallow

them in one fell swoop. We’ve been telling the Postal Service that

for years. I think they heard more frequent, I don’t think they

heard smaller.

Finally, there are things I think that the Governors can do themselves to alleviate some of the pressure that the Postal Service has.

They’ve been asked several times, would you be interested in increasing your borrowing authority to get beyond the debt limit

problems that you’re facing today. They’ve said no. There’s no reason why that debt can’t be increased. There’s absolutely no reason

why some of the flexibility they need for operational purposes can’t

be provided.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Estes, I interrupted you. You wanted to explain

about the GAO report.

Mr. ESTES. I just wanted to call your attention, Mr. Shays, to an

IG report that was part of the record of the April 4th hearing that

goes into some of the areas where cost cutting would be addressed

specifically.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MCHUGH. I thank the gentleman. Vice chair of the committee, Mr. Barr? No questions.

Next refer to my colleague from New York, who also was one of

the most active members of the Subcommittee on the Postal Service over the past 6 years, Mr. Owens. No questions.

Well, as my father used to say when he punished me, we could

do this all night, but—[laughter.]

I want to, on behalf of Chairman Burton and all the members of

the committee, thank you for being here today, for your continued

efforts, and most importantly, on that promise of continued cooperation. We certainly heard the message that you recognize the

need to act in some way. We’ll not reach a perfect solution nor one

that makes everyone happy. But if we can reach one that, as I

mentioned earlier, does more good than not and is at least palatable to the majority, perhaps that’s the way we should go.

But either way, it’s a great responsibility. Perfectly timed, thank

you so much for your presence here today.

Rather than immediately call our second panel, and I know you

gentlemen have been waiting patiently, as you just heard, we’ve

been called for a vote, it would probably make the most sense from

a time management perspective to allow the Members to go vote

and hopefully come back as soon as we can. So with your indulgence, we will stand in recess until after this vote.

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[Recess.]

Mr. BURTON [resuming Chair]. We should have another hour before there’s another vote. We’ll now welcome our second panel to

the witness table. William Quinn, Clifford Dailing, Vincent

Sombrotto and Moe Biller, who will be accompanied by William

Burrus. So would you all please stand?

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. BURTON. Be seated.

As with our first panel, we’ll ask you to try to confine your remarks to as close as possible to 5 minutes. We’ll start with you,

Mr. Quinn.

STATEMENTS OF WILLIAM H. QUINN, NATIONAL PRESIDENT,

NATIONAL POSTAL MAIL HANDLERS UNION; CLIFFORD

DAILING, SECRETARY-TREASURER, NATIONAL RURAL LETTER CARRIERS’ ASSOCIATION; VINCENT R. SOMBROTTO,

PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LETTER CARRIERS; AND MOE BILLER, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN POSTAL

WORKERS UNION, ACCOMPANIED BY WILLIAM BURRUS, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Mr. QUINN. I’m Billy Quinn, national president of the National

Postal Mail Handlers Union, representing more than 50,000 union

mail handlers. Congress is obviously concerned about two related

issues. The first is the difficult financial situation that currently

confronts the Postal Service. The second is the need for reform of

the Postal Reorganization Act.

On the question of postal finances, many of the Postal Service’s

current financial difficulties are beyond its control. The American

economy began to slow late last year, and that slowdown occurred

faster and deeper than predicted. As a result, the volume of mail

has not grown as much as expected, and the mix of that mail has

taken an unprofitable turn, thus causing deficits.

At the same time, fuel prices continue to rise, imposing additional costs on postal operations. Similar problems are facing thousands of other companies, and it is foolhardy to expect that the

Postal Service would be immune from these general economic

trends.

We therefore applaud last week’s decision by the board of Governors to raise rates. Although some have suggested cataclysmic results and have complained about a second rate increase in the past

6 months, we believe in this instance that the board chose a responsible course of action. Indeed, no mailer who complaints about

rates today ever acknowledges that rates did not increase at all for

the 2 years prior to this latest round of increases.

Unfortunately, the Postal Service also has suggested that it

might react to the economic slowdown in other less responsible

ways, such as cutting back on services. We do not believe that the

cutting of services on which the American public has come to depend is a solution to the current financial situation. Many in Congress like to blame the Postal Service or its dedicated employees

for the Service’s financial predicament.

But a review of history easily points the finger of blame in other

directions. It is Congress, you should remember, that throughout

the 1980’s and early 1990’s, used the Postal Service as a cash cow

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by imposing unjustified costs on the Postal Service in order to reduce Federal budget deficits. And it was the House of Representatives, after several years of USPS surpluses, that passed the resolution June 1998 without any meaningful debate that essentially

forced the board of Governors to delay a rate increase and forego

more than $800 million that was needed to operate the Postal Service.

The Postal Service’s competitors also share some of the blame. I

can assure each and every member of this committee that United

Parcel Service, FedEx and others have only one interest when they

debate postal reform, and it is not the public interest, it is their

own bottom line. Others may hesitate to say that publicly, but

that’s the fact of the matter.

That brings me to the second major challenge facing the Postal

Service, the need for postal reform. On this issue, Congress needs

to act to amend the current statute so we cannot argue against

congressional intervention. But Congress needs to act in a responsible and informed manner. The Mail Handlers Union will support

legislation that gives the Postal Service flexibility in pricing, the

freedom to design or introduce new postal products, and the ability

to borrow and invest with fewer constraints.

It is patently ridiculous, for example, that the Postal Service is

unable to change its pricing structure to compete for the overnight

business of the Federal Government. Frankly, I find that embarrassing, that the very government which demands universal service

from the Postal Service does not utilize that service. As many of

you know, we have been working with other employee organizations and with representatives of the mailing community to see if

a consensus can be reached around these difficult issues.

While much work still needs to be done, I am encouraged that

appropriate reform of the Postal Reorganization Act can be enacted. A key ingredient in any reform legislation, however, must be

protecting the ability of the Postal Service to provide universal

service to the mailing public by processing and delivering letters

and packages at affordable rates. These rates must be sufficient to

protect and support the infrastructure that universal service requires and to provide postal employees with a decent and fair

standard of living.

To say that I am encouraged, however, is not to say that I am

blindly optimistic. In the last few months, the board of Governors

has used the Postal Service’s recent financial difficulties to launch

an attack on the collective bargaining process that has governed

the Postal Service and its employees for the past 30 years.

That attack is wholly unwarranted. Postal reform legislation

must not interfere with the PRA’s current framework for collective

bargaining. The collective bargaining process should be treated as

sacred, and should not be changed either intentionally or inadvertently by enactment of postal reform.

This means that the collective bargaining process must be allowed to function without artificially imposed constraints, such as

price caps that effectively become wage caps. The bargaining process must be allowed to set wages and benefits and the Postal Service must be allowed to pay for its labor costs through appropriate

postal rates.

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If fair and decent wages require an increase in postal rates, then

the Postal Service must be allowed to raise its rates without jumping through the overly cumbersome hoops that currently exist. We

look forward to continuing to work with the committee and its

staff, to ensure that appropriate reform legislation is enacted.

I want to thank you for the chance to testify. I would be glad to

answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Quinn follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Quinn.

Mr. Dailing.

Mr. DAILING. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my

name is Clifford Dailing, and I am the secretary-treasurer of the

100,000 member National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association.

Rural letter carriers drive 3 million miles daily to deliver and

pick up mail for 30 million customers on over 68,000 rural routes.

Rural carrier routes average 46 miles, with 445 stops, delivering

2,875 pieces of mail daily. We offer all the services of a small post

office by selling stamps, money orders, and accepting parcels and

priority mail.

The Postal Service has added over 1 million new rural deliveries

or addresses each of the last several years. I am here today to emphasize our commitment to the future of the U.S. Postal Service

that guarantees universal service at uniform prices with 6 day delivery.

To accomplish that goal, however, we believe that Congress,

Postal Service management and postal employees must accomplish

three things. First, we need Congress to pass postal reform legislation that recognizes the changing face of America, both rural and

urban and the changing nature of communication. Rural America,

where our members work, depends on 6 day delivery for its commerce and information. E-commerce has not replaced hard copy on

the farms and small towns spread across this country. And so far,

has reached little even in the city.

Yet the Postal Service is experiencing tremendous financial prob- lems that could result in a deficit this fiscal year between $2 billion

and $3 billion. If we are losing money now, before millions of Americans begin using the internet for conducting business that involves

the mail, what will happen when the internet actually starts reducing mail volume?

That eventually is one of the reasons why Congress must continue to pursue passage of postal reform legislation. We believe

that it is imperative that all Members of Congress join with the

leaders of this community in supporting postal reform immediately.

The Postal Reorganization Act, or Title 39 of the U.S. Code, was

written at a time when the Nation typed with electric typewriters

on stationery paper, backed by carbon paper. We had phones but

no cell phones, mail but no e-mail.

Today technology has changed our lives considerably. But some

postal facts remain unchanged. We still have the lowest postage

rates in the world while carrying 46 percent of the world’s cards

and letter volume. Every day we deliver almost 680 million pieces

of mail, far more than any other Nation in the world. In this country, hard copy has not gone away. Nationally, we are in an economic slowdown. As a result, the Postal Service has collected far

less revenue this year than was anticipated at the time the last

postage rate case planned or filed.

Under current law, the Postal Service begins planning for a rate

case almost 2 years before rates can go up. Look at where the stock

market was back then. Remember what the price of gas was in

1999, and you’ll see why the Postal Service, just like many organizations, is seeing a possible financial crunch. And it’s easier to understand postal deficits when you understand that once the Postal

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Service actually decides how and when it wants to raise rates, it

takes another 10 months before that can occur.

What happens in the meantime? The economy can and often does

change dramatically. Fuel prices, a major expense for the Postal

Service service transport fleet of over 202,000 vehicles, can increase

substantially. Our competitors can adjust the gasoline price escalations by adding a fuel surcharge to their delivery prices. But the

Postal Service simply inhales our competitors’ truck fumes for at

least another 10 months.

That is one example of why the Postal Service needs greater

flexibility in ratemaking, as well as in its financing, and in the

agreement it can negotiate with its customers. We need legislation

to take the current Postal Service into a new era. That brings us

to the second major change. We need to ensure the survival of the

Postal Service, one that is the responsibility of the Presidentially

appointed members of board of Governors. The board directs and

controls the Postal Service’s expenditures, reviews its practices,

conducts long range planning and sets policies on all postal matters. They also select the postmaster general.

With the retirement this month of Bill Henderson, the board is

about to select a new postmaster general for this new era. We have

a few suggestions for this individual, to provide the leadership the

Postal Service desperately needs to thrive in this new era of electronic communication and competition. Begin by working with Congress to move postal reform onto the President’s desk. Don’t just

testify at hearings. Go from member to member to inform and persuade.

Get out of the Postal Service headquarters. Travel with few staff

and survive the postal universe. Do it regularly instead of relying

on local managers for information. Find out for yourself how we

can make this Postal Service a better organization. Visit the facilities where there are problems, so you can listen to managers’ and

employees’ views. Be a good listener, and you’ll hear about the tension that exists today in too many local offices, from small offices

in isolated rural areas to the biggest post offices in America’s largest cities.

What we’re suggesting, Mr. Chairman, is that the new postmaster general must attempt to change the culture of the Postal

Service. That is the third major objective we in the postal community must address if the Postal Service is to survive another century. We need to improve the postal workplace environment. We

don’t want managers who dictate but ones who want to cooperate.

The culture must change because today, too many workers feel

they are not satisfied employees, and don’t feel like winners. When

employees feel like winners, managers do too. One particular important problem the new postmaster general can address to improve the postal workplace is our system of incentives. Managers

and workers need to have incentives to reach their goals.

The Postal Service needs incentive based work force. The National Rural Letters Carriers has an incentive based work force for

many years, one that uses what we call the evaluated pay system.

Our system has consistently shown impressive results.

For example, rural letter carriers need less supervision, less help

from part-time carriers, overtime is not an issue for us. As a result,

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we have few disputes with our supervisors and managers, and

thousands fewer grievances compared to the other postal unions.

The only major difference in the way we perform our work compared to the other union workers in the Postal Service is our incentive based pay systems.

Rural carriers have the highest employee satisfaction index in

the Postal Service. And not coincidentally, rural carrier customers

have the highest customer satisfaction index. If we can accomplish

these three goals, the passage of new postal law, the appointment

of an enlightened PMG, and an improved workplace environment,

we could see the U.S. Postal Service empowered to go on for the

next 30 years.

Mr. Chairman, and committee, I thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dailing follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Dailing.

Mr. Sombrotto.

Mr. SOMBROTTO. Thank you, Chairman Burton, for the opportunity to testify today on the subject of postal reform.

Before I get started, I would like to make a couple of brief comments. First of all, very late last night, an unprecedented and unconventional move, the Postal Service board of Governors submitted to this committee, as well as the Senate Governmental Affairs

Committee their suggestions on postal reform. I would like for the

NALC to have the opportunity to enter into the record some remarks as it pertains to their particular submission.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Sombrotto, we encourage that, we’d like to

have remarks and suggestions from all of you. We’re going to put

all of those things into the mix and try and come up with a bill

that everyone can live with.

Mr. SOMBROTTO. Thank you. In order to supplement my testimony, I have a number of charts and graphs that I want to make

available to the committee for their perusal. I am Vincent

Sombrotto, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers,

representing more than 315,000 active and retired letter carriers.

For more than 6 years, the NALC has worked closely with Representative John McHugh and other members of this committee to

come up with meaningful postal reform legislation. Those efforts

evolved into H.R. 22, a bold approach to reforming the postal service. I fear that if we do not act soon, even the far-reaching goals

envisioned in H.R. 22 will not be enough to put the Postal Service

on a stable foundation.

The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 is more than 30 years old,

and predates the advent of the Internet and other advanced electronic communications. Moreover, the legislation could not have anticipated the intense global competition that now exists within the

delivery service marketplace. If the reports coming from the U.S.

Postal Service are to be believed, we will be facing some major

challenges in the near future.

Under the current system, the Postal Service is particularly vulnerable to economic fluctuations. For example, the Postal Service

delivers more than 52 million pieces of financial mail each year. An

economic slowdown, coupled with the reduced commercial lending

and marketing cutbacks, results in lower mail volume and reduced

postal revenue. Understandably, many feel that rates should not be

increased until the Postal Service has cut their costs. However, the

number of delivery points grow by some 5,600 addresses a day, and

mail volume is relatively flat. The result is higher cost without increased revenue.

The Postal Service can and should be seeking the statutory freedom to expand the services they offer, including negotiated service

agreements and creating joint ventures with private companies.

Unfortunately, some of the suggestions put forth by the Postal

Service have gone in the opposite direction. The Postal Service’s recent overtures to cut back on service or erode collective bargaining

rights are neither desirable nor are they feasible. Instead, the Postal Service should be looking at ways to enhance service.

If your product or service is running head to head into stiffer

competition, whether it be from other businesses, emerging techVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:11 Jan 10, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00317 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\75418.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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nologies or both, you don’t reduce the quality of your product or

your service so it’s less attractive to its customers. You try to figure

out how to improve your product or service. In the case of the Postal Service, this would mean more timely delivery and innovations

that meet consumers’ changing needs.

For businesses, the Postal Service could look to flexible pricing,

information about the progress of mailings and perhaps new

logistical and inventory control services. Ideas such as 5 day delivery are not an enhancement of service.

The other point that has been raised recently pertains to the collective bargaining system, which the Postal Service operates. Despite the commitment that John McHugh has made to the current

collective bargaining system, and the agreement of many of our

largest postal customers that changes to collective bargaining will

not be part of the postal reform bill, some continue to bring up this

issue.

I know that you, Mr. Chairman, have already understood that

the NALC will not support any postal reform bill that includes erosion of the collective bargaining rights, and specifically third party

arbitration. Without third party arbitration as a last resort, should

the parties be unable to reach what the NALC has always sought,

a negotiated settlement, there would be no pressure on management to negotiate fairly and constructively.

Calling for doing away with the rights of a neutral third party

arbitration in exchange for the right to strike are a non-starter

with us. As we march down the road toward postal reform, there

are some key principles that we must adhere to. The preservation

of universal service is paramount. This means providing full mail

service to every address 6 days a week. Other essential elements,

including enabling the Postal Service to enter into contractual

agreements and providing it with the flexibility to adapt to unexpected changes in the economy, such as the recent increases in fuel

prices.

The NALC is committed to working with all of the stakeholders

in the postal reform debate. In addition to working with you, Mr.

Chairman, and Congressman McHugh and Congressman Davis, we

know that this has to be a bipartisan effort. We need active input

of Ranking Member Henry Waxman as well as Danny Davis, who

has also demonstrated great leadership behind this issue.

Thank you again for the opportunity to provide testimony here

today. I look forward to working with you to meet the challenges

of enacting postal reform. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sombrotto follows:]

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Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Sombrotto.

Mr. Biller.

Mr. BILLER. Chairman Burton, members of the committee, my

name is Moe Biller, I’m president of the American Postal Workers

Union, AFL–CIO, with a membership of 366,000. Thank you for

your invitation to provide testimony today on the major challenges

facing the U.S. Postal Service and the impact these challenges may

have on the members of the American Postal Workers Union.

I have been a close observer of postal operations and postal labor

relations and public policy as it affects the U.S. Postal Service for

nearly 65 years. I’ve been President of the American Postal Workers Union almost 21 years. I have known and worked under 20

postmasters general of the United States.

We are appalled that the postal board of Governors has informed

the Congress that they wish to destroy the collective bargaining

process of postal employees as it exists today. As we understand it,

the board of Governors has proposed that collective bargaining in

the Postal Service be governed in part by the Railway Labor Act.

The board of Governors apparently intends to pay lip service to the

principle that postal workers should have the right to strike, but

in the manner that this is proposed, the right to strike would be

a total fiction.

Application of the Railway Labor Act to the U.S. Postal Service

would not provide a meaningful right to strike, and the Postal

Service knows this well. What they are really saying is that they

would rather place wages, hours and working conditions into the

hands of the President and the Congress rather than impartial arbitrators chosen by the parties.

Under the Railway Labor Act, when a labor dispute threatens to

disrupt an essential service, the dispute is placed before a Presidential emergency board. This would inevitably happen whenever

postal unions and management fail to reach agreement and the dispute would be dumped into the lap of the President and the Congress. No strike would be permitted and postal management would

simply abdicate its responsibility to bargain.

This is obvious from looking at the railroad and air transit industry. For the past 15 years, every rail labor dispute has prompted

Federal Government intervention. The recent Northwest Airlines

dispute is another example of the right to strike, how the right to

strike is fought under the Railway Labor Act. The Railway Labor

Act also results in long delays. In the Amtrak dispute in the early

1990’s, workers worked without a contract for more than 4 years.

It is perfectly clear that the board of Governors has no intention

of permitting a strike. They simply want to deprive employees of

any means to force the Postal Service into good faith negotiations.

I can tell you that the detailed standards the board suggests by

setting bargaining unit compensation, unlike the stance it proposes

for setting management compensation, will not give postal workers

fair and equitable treatment.

The Postal Service also wants to be free of the unfair labor practice jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board. Rail Labor

Administration coverage would deprive the National Labor Relations Board of jurisdiction. The Postal Service would avoid finding

that it committed unfair labor practices, including findings that if

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the Service fails to bargain in good faith and discriminates against

employees for protected activities.

Instead of an administrative remedy for unfair labor practices,

postal unions would be forced into court to enforce the law. This

would be time consuming and expensive for both the Postal Service, the unions and the courts.

In short, the board of Governors proposal is contrary to every

sound tenet of labor relations. Postal workers would be deprived of

free collective bargaining, which is still limited today, while the

Postal Service is deprived of its stated goals. The board’s proposal

would build in more delay and more costs without resolving the

problems for Postal Service labor relations.

The APW supports giving postal workers the right to strike

under the National Labor Relations Act. If the Postal Service

wants to be treated like a private sector employer, for example,

UPS, postal employees should be covered by the National Labor

Relations Act and have the right to strike.

Finally, I must comment on the proposal to strip veterans of

their rights and to decimate employee fringe benefits. Veterans

who have served their country with distinction deserve employment

protections and postal workers deserve decent health and retirement benefits. The proposal to strip them of health benefits and retirement exposes the Postal Service desire to return postal employees to welfare eligibility. Postal workers are hard working and productive. The proposal by the board of Governors demeans these

dedicated workers.

I would like those remarks to be added to the rest of my testimony.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Biller, we will add the other remarks that you’d

like to add.

Mr. BILLER. I apologize for the momentary delay. With me today

is Mr. William Burrus, on my left, who serves as executive vice

president of the American Postal Workers for 21 years. He served

before that as the president of the Cleveland Area local of the

American Postal Workers Union and other important offices. The

testimony we’re giving today is not just our personal testimony.

However, it is given on behalf of our 366,000 dedicated employees

of the Postal Service, which we are privileged to represent.

I took out the part where it says my remarks will be brief.

[Laughter.]

I have little doubt that the process of considering these issues

will be intensive and most likely extensive. During that process,

the resources of the American Postal Workers Union, its staff and

professional consultants are available to provide the committee

with any assistance that might be helpful.

I’m going to address four more points in this brief testimony.

Take out the word brief. First, I will state our views concerning the

reasons for the present financial difficulties for the Postal Service.

These views are based upon relatively indisputable public records

of the Postal Service.

Second, I want to place the present challenges facing the Postal

Service in perspective. The sky is not falling, and it’s important

that the Congress of the United States make sound policy decisions, notwithstanding the cries of the doomsayers.

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Third, I want to emphasize that postal workers represented by

the American Postal Workers Union have been and are an important part of successes achieved by the U.S. Postal Service since

postal reorganization in 1970.

Finally, before concluding, I want to state a few basic principles

that the American Postal Workers Union considers fundamental to

any sound effort to improve the Postal Service through legislation.

On the question of the Postal Service current financial situation, I

want to emphasize first the comments of no less an authority than

Postmaster General William Henderson and a member of the board

of Governors, as they repeatedly pointed out in testimony before

Congress and elsewhere the current financial problems of the Postal Service are a revenue issue and not a cost issue. The Postal

Service is indeed an economic bellwether. The current sharp and

unanticipated slowdown in our economy explains a substantial part

of the current deficit projection of the Postal Service.

Very similar views were expressed by a representative of the

General Accounting Office in their congressional testimony, to the

effect that the biggest unknown about the postal revenue this year

is how soft the economy will be. The critics of the Postal Service

costs are largely business mailers. These same businesses profit

handsomely because the Postal Service has reduced their postage

rate by many billions of dollars in return for the performance of

preparatory work.

In the recent rate case, the Postal Service acknowledged that it

could not justify the current discounts on the basis of cost avoidance. As you evaluate the final strength of the Postal Service, it is

important that you maintain some perspective on the present situation. There are two types of perspectives I would like to mention,

short term and long term. I will deal with the short term perspectives first.

Congress and the mailing community are very concerned that the Postal Service has projected potential deficits of $2 billion or $3 billion for this fiscal year. We have the same concerns. Only 6 fiscal

years ago, in 1995, the Postal Service enjoyed the largest increase

in operating profits of any company in the world, and earned $1.8

billion. In two other years, the Postal Service generated profits of

$6 billion and $1.3 billion.

By 1998, the criticism of the Postal Service was that it was generating too much surplus money. Thus, in the relatively short term

perspective of 3 to 6 years, it’s clear that the Postal Service as

presently configured and operated has the capacity to generate substantial surpluses as well as substantial deficits.

The long term perspective I want to offer begins 31 years ago.

In 1970, postal workers were at that time Federal Government employees engaged in the nationwide work stoppage. They withheld

their labor because working conditions were intolerable and wage

levels were unacceptably low. In 1970, postal workers in New York

City qualified for welfare. It is important to recall that in the Postal Reorganization Act, Congress addressed the problems of inadequate pay by enacting an increase in postal wage, in fact, two of

them.

Thereafter, Congress widely provided the free collective bargaining of wages, hours and working conditions. From 1970 through

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2000, the real wages of bargaining unit postal employees has adjusted for inflation and have remained virtually unchanged. Those

who call for a decrease in postal workers’ compensation as a way

of saving money must confront this fact. Postal workers will not accept a cut in real wages. We will not go back to inadequate pay and

welfare in a number of areas in this country. Any attempt to take

that approach to the financial problems of the Postal Service will

be self-defeating.

So whether your perspective is short term, within the last 3 to

6 years, or long term, the 31 years since postal reorganization, the

present financial crisis should not be permitted to obscure the fact

that the Postal Service has succeeded in keeping postage rates in

line with the underlying rate of inflation in our economy.

Next, I would like to discuss the third of my four topics, the contributions of rank and file workers to the success of the U.S. Postal

Service. At this time, bargaining unit wages are only 57 percent of

Postal Service operating revenues. I want to emphasize that this

57 percent includes all bargaining unit employees combined, not

just APW bargaining unit employees. Rapid automation has reduced labor costs as a portion of postal revenues. Postal workers

are now more productive than ever, and postal worker productivity

has played an important part in keeping postal rates in line with

inflation and our economy.

Finally, I want to outline the principles the APW considers as of

fundamental importance should Congress consider legislation to

change the postal service. One, the ratemaking process as it presently exists takes too long. Either the present ratemaking process

must be compressed into 6 months or less, or it should be replaced

with a different process.

Legislation must protect universal postal service, including 6 day

delivery of mail. This is essential both for the public welfare and

the financial health of the U.S. Postal Service.

Three, we support the provision of pricing flexibility for the Postal Service. As close observers of the antiquated postal ratemaking

process and of the marketplace, we are convinced that the Postal

Service has been forced to operate in a highly competitive market

with one hand tied behind its back. Additional pricing flexibility is

warranted.

And No. 4, the right to engage in collective bargaining for wages,

hours and working conditions must be protected. Postal workers

will not accept any effort to go back to 1970 or earlier. Any such

effort, if it were accomplished, would be counterproductive. We

have opposed in the past and we will continue to oppose legislation

that places an artificial cap on postal wages. Such legislation would

strike the heart of free collective bargaining.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared remarks. And Executive Vice President Burrus on my left and I are available to answer

your questions. We’ll be more than happy to make staff and professional consultants of our union available to the committee for consultation or any other assistance we can provide.

Thank you again for inviting us to be with you today.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Biller follows:]

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Mr. MCHUGH [assuming Chair]. Thank you, Mr. Biller. It’s good

to see you again.

Let me first of all explain the real Chairman’s absence. As you

probably heard, we had a vote. Rather than take more of your time,

we dispatched me to vote and run back, so the chairman has gone

to vote and he’ll be back. I’ll try not to infringe upon his questions.

Let me also say two things. No. 1, I appreciate the effort that all

of you gentlemen and the organizations and the hard working men

and women that you represent have made with respect to the Postal Service reorganization reform acts that we have put forward. I’m

not one of those that happens to believe that by and large, the postal workers are the problem. I think they are, if not the answer, certainly the reason the vast majority of Americans think so highly of

the mail service in this country, for all the complaining and all the

pot shooting that goes on. They understand the vital role and the

very unappreciated role that your members bring on their behalf

each and every day.

It’s a source of great criticism, which I understand on one hand,

that postal employees represent 80 percent plus of the cost of the

organization, and Mr. Biller has refuted that somewhat in his testimony. Nevertheless, it’s a little difficult when you by law have to

visit every household in America, or certainly provide mail to every

household in America, every day, to do that without people, and

good people. Your people are a tremendous asset to us. It’s certainly something that we need to keep in mind as we continue to

endeavor to deal with this situation.

Mr. Biller, you said in your comments the sky is not falling, if

I heard you correctly. I take it you meant that you didn’t feel that

the current situation in the Postal Service merits radical reform?

I don’t want to put words in your mouth. But the question I would

ask you, the Postal Service last week raised rates again, which Mr.

Quinn felt was appropriate. I understand that. But it was a rather

unusual step in that for, I believe, only the second time in the history of the Postal Rate Commission, they rejected the findings and

voted to institute that second phase of the increase.

They had placed a moratorium on some 800 postal facilities

across the Nation, either under construction or soon planned for reconstruction. Six or seven of those were in my district. Virtually

every Member of Congress was touched by that.

They called for over a 5-year period a diminution of 75,000

manhours, man years, excuse me, the equivalent of 75,000 jobs, to

be taken out of the Postal Service by attrition. And they’ve commenced a study on the possible termination of Saturday mail.

Whether you agree with those or not, those are pretty affirmative

steps, to put it in a kind light.

Would you gentlemen agree, based on what Mr. Biller said, that

those steps were an overreaction? I’d be interested in exactly where

you feel we are with respect to the Postal Service’s current fiscal

position. And it makes no difference to me who starts. Mr. Burrus.

Mr. BURRUS. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Much of the efforts by the U.S.

Postal Service are suspected to be intended to place pressure on

Congress to enact reform. It’s not unusual in a year of collective

bargaining by one of the labor unions or at a time when there’s legislation pending before the Congress that we find ourselves going

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from a $200 million deficit in 1 year to a $2 billion to $3 billion

deficit projected in the following year.

Now, the numbers that you use, the 76 to 80 percent of the employee costs, as reputed by President Biller, it’s only 57 percent of

the unions represented at this table. But whatever figure is used,

rate costs have not increased beyond the cost of the postage rate

increase that was approved by the Postal Rate Commission. The

Postal Service realized $2.8 billion in new revenue before the most

recent action.

Wages have not increased anywhere near that. My bargaining

unit, APW, is currently in negotiations, contract expires on November 20th, has not achieved a wage increase this year. So if they’re

experiencing or expect to experience a $2 billion to $3 billion deficit, it’s creative bookkeeping. As President Biller said, the sky is

not falling.

Certainly there is a need for postal reform, there’s a need to look

to the future. But all of the actions that have been announced that

the Postal Service has serious difficulties, there are serious problems about those announcements, particularly the timing of them.

Mr. MCHUGH. Well, let me followup then. Last month, Chairman

Burton convened a hearing and one of the people who testified was

the Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker. In his

both written and oral presentations, he said the GAO has found

that the Postal Service is in the midst of what he described as a

serious financial and operational crisis, that absent legislative

change places the Postal Service’s ability to meet its universal service obligations at ‘‘high-risk.’’ Do you disagree with the Comptroller?

Mr. BURRUS. I don’t disagree, but it relates to the future, it

doesn’t relate to a specific year. The GAO findings did not relate to the year 2001 and a projected deficit of $2 billion to $3 billion

in that specific year. They were taking a long term view. And the

impact of technology on the volume of first class mail into the future.

Mr. MCHUGH. With all due respect, he said, the Postal Service

is in the midst, not on the verge, in the midst of a serious financial

and operational crisis. I’m not assigning blame to that to anyone.

I’m trying to—and I’ve heard and by and large I agree with your

comments about the source of that is certainly not your workers.

Please don’t assume anything I asked was trying to impugn that

your workers are the problem. I hope I stated clearly in the beginning I don’t feel they are.

But I’m trying to ascertain, you as the leaders of those 800,000

people, how you viewed this challenge? Is it serious enough for us

to take steps to do something about it? Clearly we shouldn’t act in

haste. Moe Biller cautioned us about that. I agree with that. And

we shouldn’t act imprudently.

But should we act, I guess is the other question?

Mr. SOMBROTTO. Well, the question is, what is the real picture?

Once we define what the real picture is, then of course we have to

deal with how we correct it. But there are flaws in that picture.

I’ve heard a lot and read a lot of testimony and read some statements by the board of Governors and so on. A lot of stakeholders

have put their oar in the water, and they’re all giving their own

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views of why the Postal Service is in crisis. But I just want to respond to a couple of things, and that’s why I provided some graphs

for the committee’s attention.

Since 1972, the consumer price index has gone up some 314 percent, since 1972, the consumer price index has gone up some 314

percent. Postal workers, letter carriers, those wages have gone up

by some 297 percent. So that’s well below the inflation rate.

Mr. MCHUGH. Are you saying that price caps aren’t necessarily

a wage cap, then?

Mr. SOMBROTTO. No, I’m not talking about wage caps, I’m just

talking about what the reality is, what has happened. And postage

rates have gone up some 286 percent.

So to summarize that, the CPI has gone up greater than letter

carrier wages and postage rates have gone up less than the CPI.

So if there’s a problem here, then let’s find out what the problem

is, because it’s got nothing to do with wages of postal employees

and it’s got nothing to do with collective bargaining. And it’s got

nothing to do with binding arbitration. I just wanted to make those

points.

Mr. DAILING. Mr. McHugh, the issue that I’d like to address in

attempting to answer your question is what we are meeting about,

and that’s the ability for the Postal Service to be competitive into

the future. We recognize with your bill of H.R. 22 that something

needs to shake out, some change needs to be done for the future

of all of us to survive in providing universal service to all those customers out there.

One of the things that is always asked of me, of my rural mail

carrier customers, when I pull up to that box and provide them

with a stamp, is why don’t they just go ahead and raise it up to

35 cents? Why just a penny? That’s what our customers, or my customers, are asking me.

Now, I realize that’s just a small portion of the big picture. Pricing flexibility, that type of reform, has to be done, and needs to be

done through this Congress and the work of these committee members.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you. Mr. Quinn.

Mr. QUINN. Well, as I said in my statement, Congressman

McHugh, there are a host of reasons that contributed to this projected deficit. And clearly, some of them are out of the Postal Service’s control, a slowdown in the economy, the jump in gas prices,

have a devastating effect on the Postal Service. Obviously, you’ve

been the voice in the wilderness for a number of years, talking

about reform. But I concur with your statements that the Congress

shouldn’t act in haste in this particular matter, that we certainly

hope that some of these circumstances that contributed to the deficit are aberrations.

But as I also said in my statement, Congress is not without sin

in this regard either, because Congress was tapping into the Postal

Service’s funds to address some of the issues facing it with the national deficit when that was a cause celebre 10 years ago. So I

think everybody agrees that there’s a need for reform. The question

is, what kind of reform is going to be enacted. I hasten to caution

you that Congress has to be extremely careful not to throw out the

baby with the bathwater.

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Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you. Speaking of aberrations, my sitting

here is one and I will yield the Chair back to the Chairman.

[Laughter.]

Mr. BURTON [resuming Chair]. Thank you, Mr. McHugh. Mr.

Davis, have you had questions yet?

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Let me just indicate to the panel that I appreciate not only your

testimony but also the work that your membership performs. It’s

not quite as glamorous as the old Pony Express, but I can tell you

that the citizens of this country appreciate the fact that come rain,

shine, sleet or snow, no matter how hot, no matter how cold, that

they can expect to be able to communicate with other people across

the Nation. So we appreciate that fact.

We’ve been talking about studies and reports and criticisms and

analysis. The GAO issued a report earlier this year that talked

about the fact that productivity had only increased 11 percent in

the last 30 years, and that it actually declined 3.3 percent from

1993 to 1999. How do you gentlemen respond to that report, and

what impact do you think that labor has had on productivity?

Mr. SOMBROTTO. I provided you with some material on that question. The total factor productivity that the GAO talked about, 11

percent over the 30 some odd years, is about consistent with what

happens in the private sector in similar circumstances, that is in

similar industries or businesses. But what they didn’t take into account is the postal labor factor. When you take that into account

during that same 30 odd years, the increase in productivity in postal labor is more than 32 percent.

So it has nothing to do with productivity. The productivity has

been there. Total fact of productivity includes many facets. It includes the investment capital, investment changes that the workers

have no, the employees have no part in. When you get to the labor

itself, their labor has increased the productivity a significant

amount in those 30 some odd years.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. So you’re saying that, in reality, it has

no real impact or it’s not an issue?

Mr. SOMBROTTO. That is exactly what I’m saying.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Let me then just ask another question.

There have been concerns expressed that as we talk about postal

reform, and that as we come up with a bill, that if it should include

a postal rate indexing, that we really could be talking about putting a cap on the wages of postal employees. How do you respond,

any of you actually?

Mr. SOMBROTTO. Caps are for baseball players, not for collective

bargaining. The collective bargaining process happens to be, it’s a

national policy. And in collective bargaining, both parties sit down

in an effort to fashion an agreement that reflects the involvement

of each party in whatever the enterprise is.

We find it very comfortable for us to sit down across the table

and make our case for what we contribute to the health and welfare of the Postal Service. Management has a right to make their

case. We try to do that collectively without a third party, if we can.

When we can’t, then we have to go to a third party and we go

through the same process. Both sides have an opportunity to put

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their best foot forward, put their best evidence forward as to their

position.

And in the end, a neutral makes that decision. We’re comfortable

with that. That’s a democratic process in action. We don’t see any

need to be tinkering with that collective bargaining process.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Anyone else?

Mr. BURRUS. A price cap does become a wage cap, and we would

have no interest at all in having legislation passed that would impose on the collective bargaining process artificial limits. While it’s

true collective bargaining within the Postal Service since reorganization, we have never, particularly in recent years, achieved ECI,

which was the benchmark in H.R. 22. But that does not stop the

human spirit from attempting to exceed the ECI if that had been

the cap.

The argument that was raised that, why would the unions be opposed to a cap that they’ve never achieved in 30 years, the highest

increase received by postal employees in a single year has been a

3 percent increase. There have been occasions over the last 15 or

20 years the ECI has gone up over 4 percent.

So while we have never achieved that, to impose an artificial ceiling in the rights of workers to bargain collectively, free collective

bargaining, would be an imposition and a distortion of the intent

in 1970 where the unions were partially responsible for the passage

of postal reorganization with the promise that we would have free

collective bargaining. To renege on that promise some 30 years

later we think would be a disservice to the working people that

serve the American public.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you. I’m going to ask a question

that does not necessarily relate to your testimony, but you were

here this morning, and you all heard the testimony of the panel

that came before. We heard notions of a more constricted, or a

more limited, Postal Service as being a possible approach or a possible remedy for working through some of the difficulties that we’re

facing.

How do you respond to that? And the question becomes really,

do we think that a more limited Postal Service could generate the

revenue necessary to operate whatever part of the system that was

left?

Mr. QUINN. Well, presumably, if the Postal Service hierarchy embarks upon some project that they believe is going to generate more

revenue for the company, I don’t see what the downside is. I believe what the thrust of the statements this morning are is that

some of those endeavors the Postal Service made to generate additional revenue proved to be unsuccessful.

But I don’t see in the long run why you should, as a matter of

course, rule out any possible endeavors that could generate more

revenue. It would obviously be better for the Postal Service, it

would be better for the public, it would be better for Congress.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I think my question really dealt more

with, if privatization is to be increased or a part of the overall system, how much privatization might we be talking about? Or at

what point do we take away more revenue than we’re able to generate to make sure that universal coverage remains, or that we

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have the money in the system to provide universal coverage or universal service for first class delivery?

Mr. QUINN. Well, when you talk about universal coverage, and

privatization, it’s oxymoronic. The fact of the matter is, the privateers are interested in skimming the cream off the top. The Congresswoman from Hawaii talked about the problems in the rural

areas of that State that would be exacerbated a thousandfold if privatization were to take hold.

The fact of the matter is that private companies are not going

to provide universal coverage, they’re not going to go into areas of

this great land of ours where they’re not going to turn a profit. And

I think the concept of that on its face is ludicrous.

Mr. DAILING. I have to agree with my counterpart that any type

of privatization away from going to every mail box every day would

be a devastating effect on the universal service. I have to reiterate

again that we believe some very simple tasks could be accomplished in a type of postal reform and that would allow a pricing

flexibility in the promotion of the products that the Postal Service

can provide to the American public.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

Mr. Otter.

Mr. OTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Quinn, in your testimony, you indicated that part of the

problem was because of the economic downturn that began last

year, and that was part of the problem, the reason you were now

looking at maybe a $2 billion to $3 billion deficit in the Post Office

operations this year. How do you account for, or what happened,

then, before that? Because it seems to me that we’re about $9.6 billion in debt, and that had to happen prior to last year, because the

economy turned down last year. What happened to that money?

Mr. QUINN. Well, it’s not in my bank account. The $9.6 billion

that you’re alluding to was accumulated over 30 years. The fact of

the matter is that Congress itself knew that there were going to

be problems in the adjustment when the Postal Reorganization Act

was passed in 1970, and the fact is, through 1982, the Postal Service received subsidies from the Federal Government. They haven’t

received anything in subsidies for the past 19 years.

The fact of the matter is that the former Congresswoman from

Colorado alluded to the revenue foregone, where the Postal Service

used to receive far more moneys on mail for the blind or things

along those lines. In addition, the fact of the matter is that through

the year 1998, Congress put a hit on the Postal Service to the tune

of $14 billion in the passage of numerous omnibus budget reconciliation acts.

If you factor in all of those things, plus the vote of the House of

Representatives in June 1998 by a 393 to 12 vote, the House of

Representatives in a non-binding resolution had the temerity to

criticize the Postal Service for having surpluses in a number of

years, four surpluses in a row. And said that the Postal Service

had lost sight of the fact that it was a public trust and that the

Postal Service in effect had imposed a stamp tax on the American

people.

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So the Postal Service has been put in the position when they do

well, they’re criticized and if they do poorly, they’re criticized. But

I think the fact is, going back to the statement that I made, the

projections that were made by the board of Governors obviously

had to have been based on the economy. Nobody foresaw the economy going in the tank as it did. And once the economy goes in the

tank, you’re going to have a commensurate reduction in business

and in mail volume.

Mr. OTTER. Is it time, then, for us to have a vigorous and unabashed debate on whether or not affordable universal service is

still appropriate for today?

Mr. QUINN. Well, I guess that’s for wiser minds than I. But the

fact——

Mr. OTTER. I think it’s an important question that you need to

look at.

Mr. QUINN. The fact is that Congress mandated universal coverage. And if Congress is going to mandate it, perhaps Congress

should look at perhaps subsidizing it once again. I’m not taking a

stance on that particular thing, but Congress is making an incredible demand on the Postal Service that certainly couldn’t be made

on any other company, UPS or FedEx, etc. And somebody has to

absorb the costs for the universal coverage.

The fact is again, the privateers would love to take any kind of

business from Boston to New York, Chicago to Los Angeles, because there’s a lot more profit there. But when you go into the

more rural areas of the country, obviously, that’s not the case. But

of course, the beginning lines of the Reorganization Act talk about

binding the country through a universal mail system.

Mr. OTTER. If we did take a look at that, and we did privatize

it, or part of it, and subsidized the rural area, would it cost us

more or less than $2 billion a year?

Mr. QUINN. Well, I don’t think you can take one particular year

and say, we’re looking at a deficit now of $2 million or $3 million.

Although the Postal Service is mandated to turn a profit overall,

it’s not everything in 1 year or the next year. The fact of the matter

is, from the mid-1990’s on, there were 5 years in a row that the

Postal Service turned handsome surpluses. Obviously a lot of that,

those surpluses went to make up for the deficit that had been accumulated over the years. You alluded to that earlier.

But it’s again, as I said to Congressman McHugh, you have to

be very cautious in this regard that you don’t throw the baby out

with the bathwater.

Mr. OTTER. I agree, Mr. Quinn, and you were right and they

were wrong, and I wasn’t here. That’s a joke. [Laughter.]

Mr. QUINN. Well, I have to agree with you, I don’t know whether

it was meant humorously or not, I was right. [Laughter.]

Mr. SOMBROTTO. If I may, they were partly right, they were partly wrong, and I was here. The fact is that we have universal coverage, that is the law now. And we’re committed to universal coverage. And there’s no reason why we can’t have universal coverage

and do it efficiently, if we run the Postal Service efficiently. That’s

all it needs. It needs management that runs the Postal Service efficiently.

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It’s got one of the most dedicated work forces in the world that

work in the Postal Service. Men and women commit their lives to

this job, to working in the Postal Service. Have to work at least 30

years before you can even think about retiring. So there’s a commitment. Most postal employees, if you look at the average tenure

of a postal employee, a postal employee is upwards of 20 years now,

on the same job.

While people are changing jobs all over this country seven, eight

times during their life time, letter carriers, clerks, mail handlers,

rural carriers, all take the job with a commitment that they’re

going to stay on the job to see it through and meet the commitments of the laws that govern the Postal Service.

So all we need is, there’s no reason why we can’t have universal

service. It’s something that’s desirable, something that’s needed.

But it also can be done and it need not run a deficit if it’s done

correctly.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you. Major Owens.

Mr. OWENS. The last speaker gave us all the answers. Why don’t

we act?

My question is, and I apologize for having to go back and forth,

trying to cover three meetings, but is this meeting here any more

than a high school forum, a general discussion that has no significance? What do you think of the fact that the ability, the capability

of Congress to solve any of these problems has been drastically reduced? I think 6 or 7 years ago, we eliminated the Committee on

Postal Operations and Civil Service. We had a whole committee,

and then we reduced, we had the postal operations assigned to a

subcommittee. Now we’ve wiped out the subcommittee.

So what do you think Members of Congress are going to be able

to do? We don’t have a decent staff to come up with decent legislation or study the problem and be able to deal with the critics.

Where do we fit in the situation?

There are a number of very critical problems that need to be resolved. There are models out there for combined private-public operations, or a public operation which contracts some parts to private. There are all kinds of models we have, National Space Administration certainly is not hemmed in in certain ways that the

Postal Service is hemmed in.

There are a number of ways we might solve the problem, but

where’s the power? Who really has the power to proceed to put together some of the recommendations that you’ve been making here

and come up with some legislation that is going to be meaningful?

I don’t see it here in Congress now. We don’t have any clout any

more. I’d like to hear your comments on that.

Mr. BURRUS. There continues to be a role for Congress to play

in serving as the protector of the public in terms of providing universal service at an affordable cost. There continues to be a role.

It’s important that Congress plays that role.

Certainly the structure within the Congress has been modified

over time that the Postal Service has not received the same type

of oversight that it did back at the time of postal reorganization.

I would imagine the Postal Service on occasion is happy that there

is not that regular oversight.

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But while Congress is being requested to provide some relief

through postal reform, we believe that their consideration of that

request should not be done with the backdrop that the Postal Service has lost $2 billion to $3 billion. All of the discussions that have

transpired by the prior panel, as well as the questions posed to us,

has taken as a fact that the Postal Service is going to lose $2 billion to $3 billion. All the reports by Postal Service management has

been that if nothing changes, they could lose up between $2 billion

to $3 billion. No one has said to this date that they have lost it

or will lose it.

Mr. OWENS. Let me rephrase my question. Are you being set up

for failure?

Mr. BURRUS. No.

Mr. OWENS. To quote from a postmaster general from a Cabinet

a long time ago, the reduction of the congressional responsibilities

from a full committee to a subcommittee and then wipe out the

subcommittee, is somebody setting you up for failure so that privatization would be an inevitable answer, and privatization would be

carried out by people, certainly, who don’t represent the people, because the Congress has no capacity really to get deeply involved in

that. We don’t have a single staff person devoted fully to this pursuit, when you need a whole crew of people to stay on top of this

very serious matter.

You expressed some ambivalence when you said, maybe you don’t

want somebody to monitor you all the time. We need a strong

statement from somebody out there that Congress should get back

in the game. If you don’t feel we should get back in the game, then

I don’t think anybody else will.

Mr. BURRUS. The Postal Service has succeed in the past and can

succeed in the future. The objectives are limited. They’re being,

now that we’ve got a Christmas tree, everybody wants to put ornaments on it. Flexibility in pricing, a shorter ratemaking cycle, when

you add on collective bargaining and privatization and those other

issues, they are non-starters. If the agenda is limited, Congress can

play an important role, granting the Postal Service pricing flexibility and a shorter rate cycle.

We believe that with those changes, the Postal Service can compete in the future.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Biller, do you have an opinion?

Mr. BILLER. He stole my thunder.

Mr. SOMBROTTO. I would hope that the Congress is going to play

a role. Certainly many of us, and I venture to say most of us, are

playing the role now. The chairman’s suggestion that the stakeholders get together and see, work together toward trying to find

a common solution to what is the problem, if that problem present

itself. And to that extent, we have been meeting, we have been trying, and we will continue to do that. We will try to find a, if there

is a serious problem and if there is a serious problem, how can we

address that problem.

All that I’ve been saying on behalf of the members that I represent, that if there is a serious problem, you’re not going to eliminate that problem by reducing service, by finding artificial means

of trying to get over this what we hope is a blip in our operation.

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Mr. OWENS. I apologize for being less diplomatic than you are.

But that sounds like a Boy Scout approach. If we don’t have a subcommittee or you don’t have a committee addressing this matter,

do you really think you’re going to work things out in this informal

way?

Mr. SOMBROTTO. No. Well, I don’t know that we can work it out.

But in conjunction with those that make these decisions, then you

all are the ones that ultimately are going to have to present a postal reform. We hope that working with all of you that we will come

up with a solution.

But we want to play a role, because we have people whose lives

depend on our ability to play a role in that forum.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Major Owens.

Mr. BILLER. We don’t organize or reorganize the Congress of the

United States or its committees. So your complaint should be—— Mr. OWENS. Well, some powerful body, I was hoping there’d be

a call to the majority party to re-establish a subcommittee or committee to deal with the problem. That’s what my great hope was.

Mr. BURTON. Let me just say to Major Owens that we fully intend to get input from all the interested parties, and we fully intend to bring legislation to the floor that is bipartisan in nature.

And, although there is not a subcommittee on postal reform or

postal services right now, we’ve brought that to the full committee

for the express purpose of raising the profile of the issue, so that

we could get the problem solved.

And it is fully our intention to make this one of the No. 1 priorities of this session of Congress, because it has to be. Although we

don’t have a subcommittee or a full committee on post office, civil

service, like we had before, I can assure you, this is going to be a

top priority. I hope you’ll be a participant in helping us solve it.

Mr. OWENS. I’m pleased to hear that, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Owens. Mr. Barr.

Mr. BARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the hearing,

appreciate the witnesses, both their written and oral testimony and

their answers to questions. It’s been very enlightening. And I commend your efforts and your commitment to work with all the parties concerned over the coming months of this session of the Congress to craft legislation that will help to do something that as far

back as our founding fathers recognized was essential to the well

being and the security of this Nation and that is to have universal,

consistent postal service.

As I mentioned earlier, and I believe this very strongly, we do

have the best postal service in the world. We want to keep it that

way. But in order to do so, they’re going to have to be changes

made, there are going to have to be compromises probably made on

all sides involved. And I commend what we’ve heard here today

and appreciate the flexibility and willingness of these witnesses

and the ones that hopefully previously will be committed also to

working together to solve these problems and bring the Postal

Service into the 21st century so it can compete properly, consistent

with the national mandate that it I hope will continue to have for

universal service.

I again want to thank the witnesses for their time and expertise

here today, and their service, and look forward, Mr. Chairman, to

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working with you and other members of the committee and interested parties to craft legislation.

Mr. BURTON. Let me just end by saying we will have some questions we’d like to submit to all the panelists for the record. But

more important than that, we really do want your suggestions and

your input. And I really do appreciate all of you, if you will, to meet

collectively and with smaller groups to iron out differences that you

have here. I see in the audience some people who have had some

severe differences with the former bill, H.R. 22.

We really want to have everybody’s input, and we’re going to

take all these issues and sit down with the major interested parties

and try to work out differences that are really knotty, like cutting

through the Gordian knot that Alexander the Great cut, and come

up with a solution that we can all live with.

Everybody’s not going to be completely happy, I’m going to tell

you, there’s going to be differences, you know that, when you have

this many interested parties, there’s going to be differences. But as

the GAO said, the Postal Service is now in a high risk category.

We can differ on that. We can have some differences of opinion. I

heard what you said, I listened very clearly.

But according to a lot of the leadership in the various agencies,

there’s a very severe problem facing us. We don’t want to wait until

we get to the edge of the cliff before we stop the car. We want to

try to stop the car and solve the problem before we get that far.

So we want your input, we request your input. I really, I think

Major Owens has a point, if we waited around, it sounds like a debating society around here many times, and we don’t get a lot done.

But this is something that we have to get done. We are committed

in this committee to getting it done. Senator Thompson is aware

of the problem over there. I will be meeting with him.

I’ll be meeting with the Board of Governors this week to talk to

them about some of the problems, but we want your help, we want

your input. If you give it to us, we’ll do our damndest to solve the

problem—pardon my language, we’ll do our darndest to solve the

problem.

With that——

Mr. BILLER. We thank you very much.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Biller. Thank all of you. We stand

adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 2:15 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich and additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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