Bush signs postal reform measure

On a day when the U.S. Postal Service was at its busiest, delivering more than 900 million pieces of mail at the height of the holiday season, President Bush signed legislation overhauling the agency's operations.

In a White House ceremony Wednesday, Bush officially approved the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (H.R. 6407). The House and Senate approved the bill earlier this month during the final hours of this year's legislative session.

"This new law could not have come at a better time," said Postmaster General John E. Potter. "The Postal Service has never been stronger and this law enables us to build on our successes."

The signing of the bill marks the end of an effort stretching back more than a decade to modernize postal operations, and is the first comprehensive overhaul of the agency since its reorganization in 1971. The measure links future postal rate increases to the Consumer Price Index and allows the Postal Service more flexibility in pricing its products. The law also gives new regulatory authority and responsibility to the Postal Rate Commission.

Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., who has pushed postal reform legislation for years, called the law a "monumental achievement" and "a huge and decisive step to ensure the future of a service that virtually all Americans have come to rely on in their daily lives."

Another of the measure's key sponsors, House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., praised the bipartisan approach to passing the bill, saying it "solves the structural, legal and financial constraints that have brought the Postal Service to the brink of utter breakdown. This compromise will reverse the 'death spiral' at the Postal Service and bring it into the 21st century."

The new law shifts responsibility for funding the military pensions of postal employees to the Treasury Department and ends a mandate that the Postal Service put funds into an escrow account to pre-fund retiree health benefits. "Over the next decade, these changes will free the Postal Service of future legacy costs," Potter said. "We are now on firm financial footing for the future."

Postal labor unions were less enthusiastic about the measure. William Burrus, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said linking future postal rate increases to the rate of inflation, regardless of the Postal Service's costs, "will result in an artificial cap on postal workers' wages."

William H. Young, head of the National Association of Letter Carriers, called the enactment of the law "bittersweet." The measure, he said in a message to union members, "preserves our collective bargaining rights--rights that many workers at Homeland Security and the Department of Defense lost earlier in the Bush years."

But Young said one of the law's provisions, requiring that workers wait three days after filing claims for injuries on the job before they can receive benefits, "really sticks in my craw."