Commentary – Observer-Reporter.com

Once upon a time, the U.S. Postal Service delivered mail seven days a week. That ended in 1912, partly because of pressure from religious leaders who blamed the preoccupation of reading mail for sparse attendance at church.

Mail was delivered twice a day to residences and as many as seven times daily to businesses up until the 1940s. Mail delivery had become less vital because it was no longer the sole method of communication – by then, everyone had a telephone.

The methods of communication have multiplied, and most business is done over the Internet. Most people nowadays correspond with each other with their computers, not their mailboxes, and many pay bills and do their banking that way, too.

The Postal Service must continue to raise its rates because its volume has decreased so much, and one of the few ways that it could stop losing so much money and become more competitive with other delivery services is to stop delivering mail on Saturdays. It could save an enormous amount of money while still keeping its post offices open for business on Saturday. And the amount of fuel that this nation might save by eliminating that day’s deliveries is more than 100 million gallons a year.

This only makes sense, but Congress, of course, has no concept of sense; it has only the concept of re-election. As an appropriations bill was making its way through the Capitol, an amendment requiring the USPS to continue six-day delivery attached itself to the bill like a barnacle to the hull of a ship. That ship carried many billions of dollars necessary to keep the country running, so it chugged into law on Dec. 16.

So, let us be resigned to another year of Saturday delivery (most of it junk mail), higher postage rates and increased dependency on foreign oil.

The National Newspaper Association supports continued six-day mail, “not only on behalf of readers of Saturday editions of community newspapers (delivered by mail) but also because bill payments, correspondence and ongoing commerce contribute to economic recovery.” That’s a bit of a stretch. Is receiving a bill in the mail on Monday instead of Saturday going to hold back the nation’s economic engine?

The issue will come up again next year. Our representatives in Congress will vehemently scold the Postal Service for its inefficiency and its need to raise its rates, just as they attach another barnacle that will prevent anything substantive from being done about the problem.

The Postal Service no longer receives direct federal subsidies; it must raise its revenue from what it charges for delivery. And compared to the rest of the world, it is still reliable, quick and cheap. If Congress continues to restrict it from making necessary business decisions, we will soon be picking up the tab with tax dollars to keep the mail flowing at all.