Sam Graves: I'm proud to support the Postal Service Reform Act

(From Sixth District Congressman Sam Graves)

I was always taught you ought to leave something better than you found it. It seems some folks in Washington didn’t get the same lesson when it comes to the United States Postal Service.

Pretty much all of us depend on the Postal Service every single day—to deliver just about anything you can imagine under the sun. It’s an absolute lifeline for folks, and it’s been that way from day one.









The Postal Service is one of the only federal agencies which can trace its roots back to our Constitution. The idea is even older than that. Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first Postmaster General back in 1775 by the Second Continental Congress before they passed the Declaration of Independence. That’s how important the Postal Service was then, and it still is today.

Despite that reality, Washington has beat down the Postal Service for years. We’ve heard it all: mail is outdated, letters are a thing of the past, and we no longer need a postal service. While there’s no doubt that times have changed, a lot of what still gets sent by mail is incredibly important. On top of that, we’ve seen a big growth in packages being delivered by the Postal Service in recent years.

One of the biggest issues facing the Postal Service is the employee retirement pre-funding mandate. That one little mandate, which forces the Postal Service to prepay for retirement benefits for every single employee from day one on the job, has been a huge part of the reason we always hear news stories about the agency losing money.

It’s also why many of the Postal Service workers you know are probably part-time or temporary employees rather than career employees. That little problem doesn’t just impact the agency's bottom line on paper, it has devastating trickle-down impacts on every community in America.

But, going back to where we started, I think we’ve got a real responsibility to leave the United States Postal Service better off than where we found it. To that end, I was proud to support the overwhelming bipartisan passage of the Postal Service Reform Act this week. This rare bipartisan effort would eliminate that onerous pre-funding mandate, preserve 6-day mail service, streamline package delivery, and put the United States Postal Service back on solid ground.

For centuries, the men and women of the United States Postal Service have been delivering for America. This bill will finally get Washington out of the way so they can keep delivering for North Missourians for generations to come.