USPS expands its reach at private sector expense

Watchdog reports:

The debt-ridden U.S. Postal Service is looking to expand its service footprint from well beyond its core mail-delivery operations — everything from grocery delivery to payday loans.

But the quasi-governmental agency’s hunt for badly needed revenue streams is coming at the expense of private-sector competitors, undercutting the basic principles of the American free-market system, critics contend.

In October, the Postal Regulatory Commission signed off on a plan allowing the Postal Service to deliver groceries in San Francisco, working with mega online retailer Amazon.com to do it. The test project eventually could be expanded nationwide.

While the commission capped annual revenue from the USPS’ new delivery service at $10 million, for now, free-market advocates are concerned about the incursion on the private marketplace by a competitor that already holds a government-granted monopoly on mail delivery.

“We think this is a huge overreach on the part of the USPS,” David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, told Watchdog.org. “We already have companies that are doing this (grocery delivery). The Postal Service should deliver the mail, to get back to its core business, not this mission creep.”

Maybe the post office will get into Fannie Mae's business.