113th Congress Closes, Leaves Postal Mess
The Senate has finally left town and as expected it did not address critical postal issues that will have to wait until next year. The chairmen of the House and Senate postal oversight committees were successful in passing bills out of their respective committees but these bills proved too unpopular to bring to the floor of the House or Senate for a vote. Ironically, the problems for Senate committee chairman Tom Carper (D-DE) and House committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) were mostly within their own parties. Issa could not convince House Republican leadership to allow the Republican controlled House to vote to eliminate Saturday delivery in an election year while Carper’s last minute effort to have his bill considered was blocked by a group of Democrats who served on the committee.
The only real postal accomplishment of the Congress was the approval of the nominations of Postal Regulatory Commissioners Tony Hammond and Nanci Langley for new terms. Prior to that the PRC had been reduced to three of five members. However, the Senate closed without approving the nominations of five governors to the USPS Board of Governors leaving the BOG with only three members not including the PMG and his Deputy. [Another nomination has been sent to the Senate by President Obama but that candidate has not been cleared by the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Approval of that candidate would be the ninth slot.]
So, the industry and the USPS will have to begin again in 2015 with a new Senate chairman (Ron Johnson of Wisconsin) and a new House chairman (Jason Chaffetz of Utah).
NAPL should feel fairly good about Chaffetz. We made an effort to get to know Rep. Chaffetz when he was a freshman and after only six years in the House, he has become a committee chairman. Johnson may be a taller order since he has been on the opposite side of the industry since he has been in the Senate.
The legislative strategy for the new year will depend on several factors including the appeals court review of the exigency which of this writing has not been issued. Generally, most experts following this case believe the court will send the case back to the PRC for some additional review which may mean a longer period for the exigent rate currently scheduled to run until August 2015. The industry generally does not believe the court will either make the exigency permanent or remove it entirely. If the court rules as predicted, there may be less imperative to try to legislate a rate change since the PRC rate review process is scheduled to begin in 2017.
NAPL members should use the period over the next few months to get to know their legislators to enable the industry to make its case when the time comes.