News & information

Carper introduces iPost Act (updated)

On Sept. 17, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced the Improving Postal Operations, Service and Transparency (iPost) Act of 2015 (S. 2051).

Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, released the following statement regarding the bill:

NALC appreciates the tireless efforts of Senator Carper and his staff to craft a bill that will advance the process of achieving much needed postal reform. While Senator Carper’s new bill contains several provisions we cannot support and raises a number of serious concerns for letter carriers and the larger federal employee community, we believe it is a good place to begin the conversation about how to preserve and strengthen the Postal Service for the American people while protecting the legitimate interests of all the key stakeholders.

Over the past few months, NALC has been working with a coalition made up of the four major postal unions, several key mailing industry groups, and the executive leadership of the U.S. Postal Service, to develop consensus postal reform legislation.

In the weeks ahead, our coalition intends to work with the leaders and members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and their counterparts on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to pass postal reform legislation that makes sense and that fairly meets the needs of our country, its people and its businesses.


iPost summary and analysis

Carper’s iPost bill is comprehensive, and many of its provisions originate from legislation that was included in the Postal Reform Act of 2013 (S. 1486) in the 113th Congress.

OPM would implement the plan by requiring all current FEHP plans with more than 5,000 postal employees and annuitants to separately price their premiums for postal and non-postal federal employees – and applying the new Medicare enrollment rules to postal plan participants. Since Medicare is the primary payer of health benefits for Americans age 65 or older, maximizing enrollment (full integration) in Medicare will reduce the cost of health insurance provided by the Postal Service through FEHBP – slashing the future cost of retiree health benefits dramatically.

On Postal Service innovation and revenue, iPost includes the following: