INSIGHTS | Neguse hopes to leave his stamp on the postal service

An affordable way to send the mail is as fiscally sound as a penny saved is a penny earned.

"The U.S. Postal Service has been a bedrock service ingrained in our society for more than two centuries, with Benjamin Franklin serving as the first postmaster general in 1775," U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse said Tuesday.

He's the author of a bill he called "common sense" to bail out the U.S. Postal Service with a $25 billion lifeline to weather the pandemic. As long as Republicans control the Senate and Donald Trump’s in the White House, however, it has as much chance of becoming law as My Little Pony winning the Triple Crown.

"In particular for rural communities in the 2nd District and across Colorado, from Estes Park to Bailey to Granby, many of our constituents rely on consistent and on-time mail delivery," the Democrat from Boulder County said. "Now more than ever, as we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Coloradans are relying on mail delivery services to receive essential supplies, medications, mail ballots, 2020 Census forms and stimulus checks."

The Protect Our Post Office Act, as of Tuesday afternoon, had 80 co-sponsors, including Reps. Diana DeGette of Denver and Ed Perlmutter of Arvada.

Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat from Aurora, hadn’t yet signed on to the bill, but he intends to, he says. Crow and Neguse endorsed an April 17 letter to congressional leaders that noted the U.S. Postal Service handles 43% of the world’s mail and employs more than 650,000 Americans in 31,600 post offices.

President Trump, however, thinks postmasters are “cozy” with online retailers such as Amazon, owned by the much richer Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, which Trump considers an enemy. 

“The post office, if they raised the price of a package by approximately four times, it would be a whole new ballgame,” Trump said as he signed the latest coronavirus relief package worth $2.2 trillion. “But they don’t want to raise it because they don’t want to insult Amazon, and they don’t want to insult other companies, perhaps, that they like. The post office should raise the price of the packages to the companies — not to the people, to the companies. If they did that, it would be a whole different story.”

He called the post office a “joke” and offered a $10 billion loan with strings attached.

The Reagan economist in me doesn't see a smart investor.

Bob Beauprez, the former congressman and the two-time GOP gubernatorial nominee, schooled me on the Laffer curve some years ago. The supply-side concept holds that if government drives up the price of something, usually with taxes or regulations, it shoots itself in its fiscal footing. Tax coffers end up with less revenue, because people are discouraged and buy less. The chain reaction ripples through the economy, hurting businesses, consumers and the public good.

A tax hike by any other name is still bucks out of your pocket, and when was the last time you shipped something and thought, “Boy, that was a bargain,” the twelfth of never?

Tuesday I mailed a present to Baton Rouge. The price was $15. If I had faced a $60 fare, as Trump proposes, only the thought would count. The post office loses money, the gift seller loses money, Edgewater loses sales tax and my friend loses a swell gift. That's the Laffer curve.

Perhaps Trump and Congress are being penny-wise with the taxpayer dollar and the price of stamps. Every American should be concerned about the way they're adding to the nation’s debt, and Americans should expect the post office to work efficiently with the budget it has.

Last week Dunkin’ Donuts chief financial officer Katherine Jaspon told shareholders on an earnings call that the federal relief package would allow franchises to recoup $10,000 to $40,000 each for remodeling work in 2018 and 2019, on top of other stimulus benefits for franchisees, including $6 million in tax breaks companywide.

She began by noting that Dunkin' Donuts ended its fiscal year with its highest cash balance since it became a public company in 2011, delivering $97 million to shareholders.

America runs on Dunkin', but dollars to doughnuts, I spend a lot more mailing stuff and ordering stuff than eating fried dough glazed in sugar.

By the by, Dunkin’ D served up $100,000 for Washington lobbyists in the first three months of this year, and more than $1.3 million since 2017, according to the online database Open Secrets. That’s a lot of sprinkles.

Wednesday the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors picked the new postmaster, businessman Louis DeJoy, who has donated more than $360,000 to the president's re-election campaign and about $70,000 to the Republican National Committee since January, NBC News reported.

The post office is kind of like the now-iced Colorado public option proposal for health care, a below-market insurance policy enabled by government price caps. The idea is that a low-cost competitor holds down the prices.

Private enterprise claims it controls prices with old-fashioned competition. Look no further than the skyrocketing price of insulin among the three U.S. makers, however, to see free enterprise in a narrow trade becomes a mutual aid society.

If the price of mailing something goes up four times over, it won't be the big companies paying that, no more than it was China that paid those tariffs or Mexico that paid for that wall. It'll be me and you, every nickel of it.