Comments To Postal Regulatory Commission On Need For Public Inquiry Docket On U.S. Postal Service’s Delivering For America Plan

The Lexington Institute opposes the U.S. Postal Service’s Motion for Reconsideration of Order No. 6488 (“USPS Motion”), filed in this docket on May 5, 2023. Moreover, the Lexington Institute strongly supports the Postal Regulatory Commission’s creation of this public inquiry docket on the Delivering for America (“DFA”) plan.

Recent events have shown how essential it is that the Postal Regulatory Commission probe and be kept informed of major developments with the DFA plan. On April 27, 2023, in a two-year update on the DFA plan, the Postal Service disclosed that it projects to lose $70 billion from 2021-30. This is a major change from what it had forecast when the DFA plan was issued in March 2021.

USPS sought to portray this as progress, saying that it had reduced its projected losses from 2021-30 from $160 billion to $70 billion. Yet in the March 2021 DFA plan it said it would be breakeven from 2021-30 if the Postal Service Reform Act was enacted into law, which happened in April 2022, and if a $14 billion dispute with the Office of Personnel Management was resolved in its favor. The latter remains to be determined.

To read the full comments filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission, please click here.