The Postal Service is Not a Business

By: Jen Shillingburg, Garrett County
Published in The Garrett County Republican

There’s been much commotion about the Postal Service and voting in the past week. Justifications offered by the administration for these drastic changes seem centered on money, and citizen discourse is similar: the Postal Service must not be making money; the Postal Service must not be competing with privatized companies; the Postal Service isn’t doing well as a business.

The Postal Service, however, is not — and never has been — a business. As its name indicates, it’s a service. Congress is given the power “To establish Post Offices and post Roads” by Article I, Section VIII of the Constitution. In the same section, but behind the Postal Service, Congress is granted power “To raise and support Armies ... a Navy.”

Being listed before the Militia in the Constitution, a meticulously crafted document, is telling; communication among the people of the U.S. was paramount to its internal functioning; foreign threats are redundant against a country that cannot operate from within. Yet, no one expects the U.S. military to turn a profit, despite it being the most overfunded military in the world, spending as much as the next 10 countries combined.

“That was so long ago; who needs the post office anymore?” is the assumed follow-up. My reply is: Communities like ours need it. Kitzmiller doesn’t have a bank within city limits, but it has a post office, where citizens get money orders for rent, receive and pay bills. People also receive medication like insulin and antidepressants through the mail because it’s cheaper than using the pharmacy.

These essential and life-saving services, in addition to our personal mail needs, are all done cheaper than privatized companies because it is not a business. An envelope from FedEx can cost up to 15 times as much as one from the USPS.

These operations are essential to small towns like ours in Garrett County, just as they were essential to the country at its inception, and I have yet to discuss mail-in voting. Rural areas like ours have historically low voter turnout, a large part of which is the classist nature of polling places, open for one Tuesday during working hours.

Another contributing factor is ignorance. Citizens don’t know who is running, what those offices are for, or that they can legally leave their workplace to vote. Both issues can be mitigated by absentee voting. Absentee voting gives more than a few hours to get the vote turned and considerable time to research candidates.

It allows others still — the elderly, the disabled, the college student, the soldier overseas, the immunocompromised in the midst of a global pandemic — the ability to vote at all.

The Postal Service is not a business, and that is its greatest strength.