House of Representatives Holds Hearing on the U. S. Postal Service

Letter Carrier (1908). Source: National Postal Museum

On Thursday, April 15, 2010, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing to examine the status of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), and on recent reports on short and long-term strategies for its financial viability and stability. The hearing was titled: Continuing to Deliver: An Examination of the Postal Service’s Current Financial Crisis and its Future Viability,  and I was honored to represent my agency at the hearing.  The other witnesses were:

• John E. Potter, USPS Postmaster General;
• Ruth Goldway, Postal Regulatory Commission Chairman;
• David Williams, Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Postal Service;
• Phillip Herr, Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues,
  U.S. Government Accountability Office; and
• John O’Brien, Senior Adviser to the Director, U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

The reports referred to above were:

• U.S. Postal Service, Ensuring a Viable Postal Service for America: An Action Plan for the Future (Washington: USPS, March 2010); and
• U.S. Government Accountability Office, Strategies and Options to Facilitate Progress Toward Financial Viability, GAO-10-455 (Washington: GAO, April 2010).

A printed record of the hearing (including my own testimony and responses to questions) was published by the Government Printing Office here.

A video of much of the hearing is available here.  My testimony appears in this video at 17.10.