WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE . . . .

The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito. The views expressed are solely the author's.

There's that old saying that there are two things you should never want to see, i.e., the making of sausage and the making of laws. Since my uncle was in the meat provisions business, I got a lot of experience in my younger days wth the making of sausage. As a postal trade association executive, I've has more than my fair share of watching the sausage of making laws. You need a strong stomach when it comes to sausage making. I suppose the same could be said of making laws.

Over the past year, those who are a part of what somewhat euphemistically is called the postal community have had to learn more than their fair share of the ins and outs of congressional lawmaking--most particularly the ins and outs of congressional budget scoring. Under the procedures Congress uses today, all legislative proposals must undergo a review by the Congressional Budget Office to determine the bill's effect on the congressional budgeting process. That is, CBO tells Congress whether a proposal adds to or reduces projected budgetary surpluses or losses. To be deemed good, the measure must not result in anything that would increase the federal deficit. Any measure that adversely nicks the federal budget is said to have a budget score.

The challenge all congressional lawmakers face is to ensure their bills are budget neutral. What that sometimes means is that any projected increase in the budget deficit must be offset by some other provisions that generate budget savings or produce additional revenue. So, if one provision within the bill has a negative score, it must be offset by something else that neutralizes the score.

As Congress gets ready to take another stab at postal reform, it might make sense to bring the same kind of discipline to bear by using the $20 billion savings by 2015 target that has been set out by the Postmaster General. Members of Congress just might find that measuring the pluses or minuses of any proposed reform measure by ascertaining its score against the PMG's cost cutting criteria might be truly instructive.

Those who have come forward with postal reform measures of their own allegedly maintain a desire to deal with postal reform once and for all, rather than enact a half-hearted measure that soon will bring everyone back to the drafting table for subsequent stabs at reform. How better to know whether the proposals that have been set forth are likely to be enduring or merely transitory than by scoring their provisions against a performance metric the Postal Service's chief executive officer already has articulated.

As was noted in an earlier published piece ("It's Time to Get a Grip on Reality"), none of the bills introduced thus far will satisfy the goal of reducing postal costs by $20 billion by 2015. Congress quite apparently wants budget scoring to be a key determining factor as to whether an idea is sufficient. Well, if budget scoring is good for the goose, there's no reason why scoring against a reasonably articulated postal budget balancing goal shouldn't be good enough for the gander.