USA Today: For the most part, the Postal Service is a business. But it has a 535-member board of lawmaker-directors who can’t resist second-guessing the business decisions the post office desperately needs to make to survive in the Internet era. If this were an ordinary business, it would have closed thousands of its under-utilized facilities and reduced staff far more than it has. Or it would have filed for bankruptcy. But unlike a real business, that’s not an option for one of the country’s oldest and most important institutions. A House plan sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is closer to what’s needed. Postal unions insist that the core business is fine. But the post office’s core business isn’t fine. Even without the pre-funding, it’s losing money, and that will only get worse. There’s nothing pleasant about cutting jobs and closing post offices and mail processing centers. But the alternative is forcing taxpayers to subsidize a bloated system that operates at a loss. Unless Congress is willing to make tough choices, the Postal Service’s woes could make the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler look like chump change.

USA Today: Opposing view by Sens. Lieberman, Collins, Carper, and Brown — By a strong bipartisan vote, the Senate passed a bill last week that gives USPS the authority it needs to right-size, modernize and remain competitive. It isn’t a perfect bill, but it would put USPS on a path toward financial stability. Nearly 80% of Postal Service costs are workforce-related; these must be confronted. Under the Senate bill, USPS would use the same kinds of retirement incentives that private industry uses to restructure and voluntarily “right-size” its workforce, to further reduce the postal workforce by 20%, or roughly 100,000 positions, eventually saving $8 billion a year. The bill also establishes an orderly and predictable process for achieving a more optimal network of post offices and mail processing plants, requiring involvement of local communities to ensure that essential services are preserved, while reducing mail processing centers by a third. It’s not enough just to cut expenses; USPS must grow revenue through innovation, new products and services in a digital age.

Washington Post: S.1789 leaves postal union leaders ambivalent, at best. John F. Hegarty, president of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, said: “We’re not endorsing it whole¬¬heartedly. We’ve come out in cautious support, recognizing there are still some improvements that need to be made.” James Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers, said: “We’re sort of disappointed. . . . It’s sort of a missed opportunity, sort of tinkering around the edges.” And Greg Bell, executive vice president of the American Postal Workers Union, said: “It’s an improvement over the original bill, [but] we have some issues.” The first issue Bell cited is a provision in the legislation that would reduce some workers’ compensation payments three years after enactment, not including those who are totally and permanently disabled or already above retirement age. This would apply to federal employees generally, not just postal workers.

Bloomberg Businessweek: A Senate bill to overhaul the cash- strapped U.S. Postal Service would make it more difficult to shutter post offices considered too costly to maintain. The legislation would create an appeal process to let customers protest plans to close individual offices. The Senate began voting today on proposed amendments to the bill, S. 1789, including at least eight that would delay decisions on shutting down postal sites.

Washington Post: The final bill (S. 1789) is expected to pass the Senate but faces an uncertain future. The House has yet to begin consideration of a different version of a postal bill, which seeks to create a national commission that would make major decisions on postal cuts and make it easier to eliminate Saturday delivery. The commission, which would have authority to do away with no-layoff clauses in postal employee contracts, is fiercely opposed by postal unions. “This of course kicks the can down the road,” complained Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who unsuccessfully pushed for a commission in the Senate bill. He argued that the current bill failed to address longer-term fixes, instead hiding behind studies and reviews that unnecessarily delayed major decisions.

National Association of Letter Carriers: The NALC has argued for months that S. 1789 would fail to preserve the long-term viability of the Postal Service because it embraces the downsizing plans of Postmaster General Pat Donahoe. By voting against an amendment offered by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) to preserve six-day delivery (by a vote of 56 to 43) and by voting to slash federal employee workers’ compensation benefits (by a vote of 53 to 46), the Senate has failed to improve a deeply flawed bill. Tell your senators to vote “NO” on S. 1789.

The Star-Ledger: What many observers fail to give weight to, though, is just how burdensome the terms are under which the postal service is forced to operate. Congress has the obligation to change those terms if it wants the U.S. Postal Service to perform as a modern business. It isn’t a level playing field, not at all. Every effort the postal service has made to generate business (e.g. online bill paying; shipping certain products; providing new services; banking; phone cards, money transfers; email accounts) either private companies objected (e.g. Internet industry; banks; FedEx) or Congress itself (prompted by the lobbying crowd) put a stop to it, forcing the postal service to abandon the effort.

New York Times: How vital is the United States Postal Service? The Senate is attempting to answer that this week as it debates the service’s obvious need to drastically reform its business model in the age of electronic communication. Postal officials say they must close about 3,700 underused post offices (there are 32,000 nationally) while offering alternative services through local businesses. They also want to consolidate hundreds of regional processing centers and eliminate Saturday mail deliveries. Lawmakers in both houses, fearful of constituents’ wrath, would prefer to procrastinate as usual. But the quasi-independent service — which receives no revenue from the federal government but is subject to tight oversight from Congress — has set a May 15 deadline to begin making cutbacks if it is to avoid bankruptcy.

Washington Post: On Tuesday, the Senate is set to vote on up to 38 amendments to a major bipartisan bill that would reform the Postal Service, including proposals to end six-day mail delivery, continue six-day mail delivery, require USPS to wait two more years before closing small rural post offices, and to close post offices on Capitol Hill. As we’ve noted before, the issue is tricky to track because it doesn’t break down along traditional partisan or ideological lines. Instead, postal reform pits lawmakers from smaller rural states against colleagues from larger, more urban areas. Lawmakers who normally work closely together — such as Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) — are on opposing sides of the issue. Senate leaders may trim the list of amendments to 20 or fewer by votes beginning Tuesday. Lieberman, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) negotiated late last week to permit votes on the amendments as a way to keep skittish colleagues happy and to allow at least a few of them the opportunity to say they tried to protect small post offices, the concerns of senior citizens and home-state businesses that rely on or profit from the mailing industry.

Dead Tree Edition: The longstanding problems of inaccurate pension estimates and slow pension payments for Postal Service and federal employees may finally be addressed by Congress. Sen. Mark Warner Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) has proposed an amendment to the postal-reform bill in the Senate that would require monthly reports on the accuracy and timeliness of pension estimates, the backlog of retirement applications, and the status of the retirement systems modernization project.

New York Times: Well before online bill paying was popular, the Postal Service in 2000 began operating a secure system that would have allowed it to remain the primary conduit for most Americans’ monthly payments. Getty Images But the Internet industry objected, and Congress successfully pressured the Postal Service to abandon it. The same pattern has repeated several times over the last decade, with the Postal Service identifying a way to cope with the decline of traditional mail, only to have companies — and ultimately Congress — object.

National Association of Letter Carriers: NALC opposes S. 1789 as currently drafted and will urge senators to vote “NO” on Tuesday unless three amendments are adopted: The Udall Amendment (#2043) to strike the authorization to eliminate Saturday delivery in two years; The Shumer Amendment (#2050) to preserve door-to-door delivery for 35 million to 40 million households that would be phased out under S. 1789 as drafted; and The Akaka Amendment (#2034) to delete the draconian reform of the federal workers compensation system (FECA) and replace it with the NALC-supported FECA reform bill (H.R. 2465) that already has passed the House of Representatives.

Government Executive: The debate on the 21st Century Postal Service Act (S. 1789) is slated to continue in the coming days, with additional amendments likely to be introduced. The Senate will vote on the bill after 30 hours of floor debate. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has told senators that he would like the vote wrapped up by the end of this week, but it could spill into next week, according to senate aides with knowledge of the process. The House still is working to gather enough Democratic votes to pass its major postal reform bill. On Tuesday, the National Association of Letter Carriers released its own overhaul recommendations, developed with Lazard Group, an independent advisory firm. The union, which represents about 275,000 mostly urban letter carriers, proposed addressing USPS prefunding requirements, growing some of its services, and raising selected postage and parcel rates. The Senate bill is “a stop-gap, not a solution,” NALC said.

Wall Street Journal: The nation’s largest mail-carriers union wants the U.S. Postal Service to raise stamp prices and expand mail delivery. In a report to be released Tuesday, it sharply criticizes the agency’s own rescue plan and argues the Postal Service will become profitable only if it restructures itself like a business.

Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service: The Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service supports the Manager’s Amendment to S.1789 being offered by the bill sponsors, and applauds the efforts they and their staffs have put in to reach a result that takes major steps toward preserving a useful postal system to serve the mailing public. We strongly recommend a yes vote for this very constructive substitute. We understand there will be amendments offered to the substitute. We urge opposition to any that would direct or cause rate increases beyond the agreed-upon provisions in section 402. Rate increases of any kind beyond the annual CPI increases in current law will prove toxic to USPS, driving substantial additional mail volume out of the system, and worsening an already grave financial situation.

Washington Post: The Senate is slated to resume consideration of legislation that would significantly overhaul the operations and finances of the U.S. Postal Service as the struggling agency nears the end of a self-imposed moratorium on closing post offices and processing facilities. The bill set for debate in the coming days is co-sponsored by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and would delay the Postal Service’s move to a five-day delivery schedule for at least two more years while requiring the agency to downsize, rather than close, most of the processing facilities it wants to close. In recent weeks, the bill has been changed to address the concerns of several senators — mostly from smaller, rural states — regarding how and when the Postal Service can shutter small post offices.

Auctionbytes: On April 12, the National Association of Letter Carriers will hold demonstrations outside of Senate offices across the country in order to pressuer senators to oppose S. 1789, which it believes will be brought up in the Senate after the Easter recess.  Letter carriers say the legislation will hurt the Postal Service.  MORE

Saginaw News: As protesters prepare to demonstrate in front of lawmakers’ offices across the country to demand changes in a United States Postal Service reform bill, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin said today he shares some of their concerns. Levin plans to introduce an amendment to Senate File 1789 that would give the public a chance to first appeal the closure of any postal facility. The amendment could impact all facilities proposed to be closed, including two in Saginaw. MORE

PRNewswire: In speech at Rutgers, NALC President called on Congress to take time to draft comprehensive reform instead of pushing through flawed legislation. Fredric V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said Friday that Postal Service legislation pending before Congress lacks any long-term vision and fails to provide for the creation of an effective business plan for a vital American institution. “What the Postal Service needs most is a new business model,” Rolando said, “built from the bottom up, one that looks above the immediate financial and structural problems to find opportunities to meet the evolving needs of the American people in the 21st century.” MORE

Business Insider: Direct mail does work. Sure it’s hard to track the results, sure it’s not as fancy as a digital campaign, but it does drive sales. Business owners and markets don’t  down one method of doing marketing (or anything else), if it works. One type of marketing might be great for one segment of customers and one particular thing and one method might be great for something else. MORE