Your recent editorial “Exigent postal price is a bad idea” suggests that the Postal Service has done little to reduce its costs or manage its employees complement, and therefore its request for a modest rate increase should be denied.

I thought your readers would be interested to know that since 2000, the Postal Service has reduced its costs by $1 billion per year every year except for 2009 when the reduction totaled $6.1 billion. In the same timeframe, we have reduced our employee complement by more than 200,000 employees, all the while maintaining record breaking independently measured service scores.

The editorial further asserts that the Postal Service is somehow flaunting the law by proposing a price increase above a CPA cap enacted in 2006. That same law permits the Postal Service to propose an increase under “extraordinary or exceptional” circumstances. You are aware that an anthrax attack would meet this standard, but since Congress did not offer a definition, we’d suggest that the worst recession since the Great Depression just might apply.

We have seen our mail volumes drop from 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 177 billion pieces in 2009. That’s the largest drop in our history, surely extraordinary is not exceptional.

You further note, correctly, that the Postal Service is burdened by a requirement that it prepay its retiree health benefit obligation by $5.5 billion per year; another aspect of the 2006 law referred to above. You say Congressman Lloyd Doggett has signed in to legislation a bill  that would relieve us of that requirement. Unfortunately, there is no such bill pending.

In summation, we’re doing our best to control our costs and believe that the 5.4 percent price increase we’ve proposed (two cents on a First Class stamp) is modest and reasonable and will help the Postal Service financially in the short term. There are a number of other actions that need to be taken, but be assured, our goal is a viable and healthy Postal Service working for the people of Kyle well into the future.

Manny Arguello
District Manager Rio Grande District,
USPS