Remarks Of Paul Steidler To U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors

November 10, 2021 Meeting

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Thank you to Postmaster General DeJoy, Chairman Bloom, and all the Board members for your service. You do a great deal of work and frankly do not get compensated fairly for it.

The Lexington Institute, though, respectfully, strongly, and profoundly disagrees with the decision to slow 40 percent of first-class mail. We urge you to reverse course on this pivotal matter. The Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) has received more than 100,000 comments from business organizations, labor, NAACP, and many others with similar concerns.

Mail is the Postal Service’s public service mission. While volume is declining, and mail may seem to be a more rote and mundane product, it is more important than what you do on the package side. Legal correspondence, bills, personal letters are still essential to tens of millions of Americans and mail volume is approximately 16 times package volume.

21 Attorneys General got it right when they said, “A policy that prioritizes competitive packages above First-Class letter mail cannot be squared with the statutory requirements that the Postal Service, ‘give the highest consideration to the requirement for the most expeditious collection, transportation, and delivery of important letter mail.’”

I urge you to put forward to the Congress, the PRC, and the American public a proposal that would state what it would cost to meet the pre-October 1 standards. Thank you.