Legislation aimed at helping the U.S. Postal Service become more financially viable has passed the House by an overwhelming majority and is on the verge of clearing the Senate by next week, the Wall Street Journal reported. The reversal of fortune would represent another bipartisan breakthrough after last year’s roughly $1 trillion infrastructure law. The bill, which the White House and postal unions support, would eliminate a requirement that the Postal Service pre-fund retiree health benefits, saving what the Postal Service projects is $27 billion over 10 years. The bill would also require postal workers to enroll in Medicare when they reach 65 years old — something that Congress said about a quarter of the agency’s workers don’t do. That change would save the Postal Service about $22.6 billion over a 10-year period, the agency estimates. It also would make permanent six-day-a-week delivery, a policy that Congress has put into annual appropriations bills as a bulwark against a conservative drive to force service cuts. The Postal Service would be able to strike agreements with local governments to provide services like offering fishing, hunting and drivers’ licenses. Its supporters anticipate that the bill will also allow the Postal Service to invest in package-sorting equipment to speed mail-delivery and to restructure it for a world in which first-class mail will decline further while package delivery rises.
