House renames dozens of post offices, ignores postal service needs

As of Wednesday, the postal service is in default on the mandate Congress has imposed on it to pay $5.5 billion a year to prefund retiree health benefits for the next 75 years. But never let it be said that Congress doesn't care about the postal service:

In the 18 months the 112th Congress has been sworn in, the House has introduced 60 bills to rename post offices.  Thirty-eight have passed the House and 26 have become law. During those 18 months, the House has produced 151 laws, 17 percent of which have been to rename post offices, according to Congressional Democrats.

Although on second thought:

Not a single bill has come to the House floor aimed at reforming a Postal Service, which is bleeding billions of dollars because of Congressional mandates.

The problem is that, having created a crisis for the post office, most of the supposed fixes Congress has proposed for that crisis (which politicians of course don't admit to having created) don't address the real problems. They may slow the crisis, but they don't stop it. What the postal service needs, instead of inaction and bad action from Congress, is the freedom to succeed. It needs the ability to innovate, even if that means competing with the private sector'something Congress has repeatedly blocked. It needs to be strengthened by being allowed to offer more services, not weakened by reducing the services it now provides. And what our economy does not need is another wave of lost jobs.

Even if the House had acted on a postal service bill that did something other than rename post offices, that would not have happened under Republican leadership.