Today, President Joe Biden is signing the Postal Service Reform Act and Matt Hildreth of RuralOrganizing.org is in Washington, DC to attend celebration events, including the bill signing ceremony.
The signing of this bill marks the end of our two year campaign with a coalition of over 300 organizations like Social Security Works, VoteVets, ACLU, NAACP, Indivisible, MoveOn, Color of Change, and the National Farmers Union to save the Post Office!
There’s no doubt about it. Our campaign wouldn’t have been successful without the power created from a mobilized grassroots network of people like you.
Together with MoveOn, we generated over 430,000 signatures demanding Congress and the White House fully fund the post office.
We even commissioned a bluegrass theme song about our campaign.
Here’s What We Won With the Signing of the Postal Service Reform Act
The Postal Service Reform Act eliminates the pre-funding mandate for retiree health benefits, integrates postal retirees into Medicare, creates a public real-time USPS performance dashboard, and enables “non-postal services” in partnership with state and local governments – like fishing licenses and subway passes – that were previously forbidden by the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.
The vast majority of the budget shortfall at USPS can be attributed to the pre-funding mandate, and eliminating it removes the excuse for the service cuts and price hikes that postal customers have experienced since Louis DeJoy became Postmaster General.
The Postal Service Reform Act is a huge first step in getting USPS back on track, protecting the countless Americans who rely on the postal service to deliver prescription medications, and protecting the millions of union workers who day in and day out work hard to keep this country moving.
The United States Postal Service is one of the government’s oldest and most reliable entities. All Americans rely on the Postal Service, but in rural America, the Postal Service has been a lifeline. Private delivery services don’t want to risk their profit margins by providing service to everyone so they exclude many small towns and rural areas, but the USPS has never abandoned us.
But our work is not yet finished. We are still calling on Congress to remove other artificial barriers to USPS’s success, like enabling the postal service to bring back postal banking and ensuring a union-built fully-electric postal fleet. And we are calling on the President to fill the postal board of governors with appointees committed to protecting and expanding the postal service.
How We Are Celebrating the Signing of the Postal Service Reform Act
Matt Hildreth of RuralOrganizing.org is in Washington, DC to attend celebration events including the bill signing ceremony. He’ll be live tweeting the events where possible from the RuralOrganizing.org Twitter account.
