Senator Collins, in a letter to the Coalition for a 21^st Century Postal Service, shares her "frustration with how the Postal Service handled its current economic challenges." Senator Collins has been at the forefront of postal affairs since the beginning phases of postal reform. She goes further to say in her letter that as author of PAEA she does not see how the circumstances facing the Postal Service are "extraordinary" or "exceptional." She clarifies these terms saying that "by "extraordinary" and "exceptional," I meant a terrorist attack or a natural disaster as my April 2007 letter to the Postal Regulatory Commission explained."

She specifically points to a statement made by the then-Commission Chairman George Omas as saying ". . . exigent increases are limited to extraordinary circumstances, and are not appropriate simply because revenues are misestimated or cost reduction programs are not as successful as planned. These types of events are normal in business, and postal management must be expected to adjust to normal business fluctuations."

I find Mr. Omas’ statement very interesting as he now serves as a consultant to the Postmaster General and senior postal management. Senator Collins further explains that "the PAEA adopted this standard." So whether or not the senior postal management actually agrees with this standard, they had to know that this was the standard to which an exigency case would be judged. Did they ignore Mr. Omas’ objection to a filing or did he not speak up?

Among the highest ranking members of senior management are people who worked in government relations for the Postal Service while this law was being passed. They had to be aware of the circumstances Senator Collins is referring to, so why did the Postal Service choose to move forward with an exigency case? What is even more frustrating is that there are at least two postal employees who leading up to passage of PAEA worked on the hill. One is now the Vice President of Pricing! This begs the question - how could the USPS choose to move forward with an exigency case? Where were these managers in the decision making process? Did they speak up or go along with the decisions being made?

If prefunding is the problem, why is the Postal Service choosing to punish the mailers? Is it because most backed the PAEA and its price cap? Or is it because that is the only way USPS management knows how to solve revenue issues?

In a weak attempt to combat the recent negative PR it has received for filing the exigency case, the USPS released an update to its business plan telling mailers it is providing "accurate information" on the state of the USPS, its finances, and its future. There are many questions left unanswered from this update as well as the recent filing in the exigency case - "Explanation of cost reductions, other programs, and corporate wide activities." In March of this year, the USPS explained that senior management could take out a total of $18 billion with a cumulative impact in the next ten years of $125 billion. So why are the estimated cost reduction figures so low in FY2011? How will the USPS ever achieve its $125 million with such low annual numbers? Was the $125 billion a farce? Or does the USPS have some grand plan to extract the $18 billion in costs necessary to create the $125 billion total reduction by 2020?

It seems that there are more questions than answers. And the more the USPS tries to dig itself out of the huge hole it has fallen into, it just creates more questions and fewer answers. Every new question just gets harder to answer. How well informed were the Governors of the standards to which PAEA was enacted? Is it true that the Governors wanted a higher increase than what was actually proposed by the USPS as rumors have indicated? Maybe Congress needs to start looking to the Governors for some answers instead of the PMG, and maybe, just maybe, the Governors will start looking at the company they keep.