JOPLIN, Mo. —
A postal price increase is a bad idea at a bad time for newspapers, subscribers and the entire mailing industry.
The National Newspaper Association has joined the fight to halt the Postal Service’s “exigent” price increase filed July 6 with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). The price increases include a 2 cent hike on the first-class stamp, but a much more serious increase for the mailing of newspapers and magazines.
The increase will also affect churches, community organizations and labor groups that use nonprofit mail. It will affect businesses that use the mail for communications and advertising. It will affect catalog companies that send packages in the mail. It will affect everyone.
The new rates will be effective Jan. 2, 2011, unless the PRC stops them.
Our fight is in the best interest of consumers and anyone who mails.
In 2006, a price cap that held postage rates within inflation levels went into effect as a result of the work of NNA and other groups representing users of the mail. That cap allows increases only within the Consumer Price Index as tracked by the PRC, which is less than 1 percent currently. The U.S. Postal Service wants an average of 5 percent increase in postage. The proposed rates would weaken the cap and maybe destroy it forever.
To its credit, the Postal Service did not try to increase rates in 2010 following the severe recession starting in 2008. But it blames its problems on the recession, in large part, even though its mail volumes began to fall in 2007, before the recession. It also notes competition from the Internet as a reason for its current financial woes. Yet it wants to solve its problems by charging more. It is a solution that could lead, as Sen. Susan Collins, of Maine, said, to a death spiral by our important national universal mail system.
These postage rates are a bad idea at a bad time. While Congress has no immediate role in the rate case, our congressional delegation should be aware of your opposition, as citizens and voters, to both this price increase and 5-day delivery, where they are the decision makers. If the price cap is broken for this reason, then it will cease to exist as proscribed by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006.
Opinion
In our view: Postal rate hike bad idea
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