6-29-2022 AIP

Imagine hearing your mother has been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)—more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Between 2011 and 2014, almost 25,000 people in the United States died from it. While the disease has been diagnosed for decades, there is no known cure. With that in mind, imagine that after the doctors provide the diagnosis, they explain that although there are promising treatments being developed in clinical trials, none are available because the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) burdensome and onerous review process prevents them from being used.

Last year, President Biden signed the Postal Service Reform Act which, among other things, gave the United States Postal Service (USPS) a $58 billion taxpayer and Medicare bailout. The agency got a sweet deal with this legislation, as Congress gave it another financial lifeline without reforming the financial and accounting practices that failed the USPS in the first place. In fact, this legislation only exacerbated these problems by creating an integrated service network that gives USPS the authority to bundle expenses and earnings of its package business alongside its letter mail service, which makes it impossible to know where it makes money and where it does not.