New Postal Bill Demands 95% On-Time Delivery for Magazines Before USPS Can Raise Rates

The new Deliver for Democracy Act is all about holding the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) accountable for how fast it gets your magazines and newspapers to you. Basically, if the USPS wants to raise the rates it charges publishers for periodicals—think the glossy magazines and weekly papers—it first has to prove it’s doing a better job delivering them. Specifically, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) can only grant the USPS extra rate authority if the USPS can show it either hit a 95% on-time delivery rate for periodicals in the previous year, or if it improved its on-time delivery by at least 2 percentage points compared to its best recent performance. This is a direct shot at improving service quality; no performance, no extra rate hike.

The 'Show Your Work' Rule for Newspapers

Beyond just the rate hikes, this bill mandates a new level of transparency for newspaper delivery. The Postmaster General must now publicly release an annual report detailing the on-time performance for newspaper mail, both within the county and outside of it (Sec. 3). For the average person, this means better data on whether the local paper is actually making it to the porch on time. Here’s the catch, though: If the USPS can’t track every single newspaper individually, the PRC and the Postmaster General can team up to create a system to estimate the data using mail bundles. While this is a practical way to handle massive volumes of mail, it means the performance data we see might be based on estimates rather than hard tracking, which is something to watch out for.

Who Benefits from Better Delivery?

This legislation primarily benefits publishers and, by extension, the subscribers who rely on timely delivery. If you are a small-town newspaper publisher, the pressure on the USPS to perform better means your product is more likely to reach readers while the news is still fresh. If the USPS fails the performance test, publishers get a break on potential rate increases, which helps keep their costs down. However, the flip side is that the USPS needs revenue to operate. If it consistently fails the performance metrics and can’t raise rates on periodicals, that revenue shortfall might need to be covered elsewhere, potentially leading to higher costs for other mail services down the road.

The Big Picture: A Financial Deep Dive

Finally, the bill calls in the big guns: the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO has two years to study and report back to Congress on how the USPS prices certain products—specifically those that are currently losing money (Sec. 4). This isn't just about periodicals; it’s a broader look at the USPS’s financial model. The GAO will explore different pricing strategies and analyze the impact of those changes. For everyday people, this study could be a major signal of future changes. If the USPS is forced to raise prices significantly on certain services to cover costs, it could affect everything from the cost of mailing a package to the viability of delivering specific types of low-revenue mail in rural areas. It’s a necessary financial check-up, but the resulting recommendations could shake up the entire postal ecosystem.