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CONGRESSIONAL RECORD: July 15, 1999

PROVIDING FOR THE CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2490, TREASURY AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT

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HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS

[Page: H5610]

Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise with some bit of ambivalence with this rule, but I will support the rule. I was concerned about a special issue with the Post Office and was hoping that we could address this in detail, and that has to do with the regulations that I consider very onerous and very maliciously placed on private mailboxes, the Commercial Receiving Agencies. I was very hopeful that we could deal with that. But it appears we will have another chance to do that at a later date.

I have a House joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act, H.J. Res. 55. If that were to pass, we could rescind all those regulations. Currently, it is my understanding that these regulations have been put on hold. They will not go into effect soon. But the problem still exists, and I see it as a serious problem.

First, let me talk about the Post Office. The Post Office is a true monopoly. In the free market, there are no true monopolies. Only government can allow a true monopoly.

We do have enough freedom in this country to some degree to offer competition to even this monopoly of the Post Office. By doing this, the private post offices have been set up to give additional service and privacy to many of our citizens, and they are well used.

But now the Post Office sees this as a competition because they are providing services that the Post Office cannot or will not provide. So instead of dealing with this, either providing legalized competition in the Post Office or providing these same services, instead, the Post Office has issued these onerous regulations to attack these customers.

They are forcing these private mailbox operators to develop profiles on every customer, have double identification, and then make this information available to the public and to the Post Office for no good reason.

When I first got involved in this, I did not know which constituencies would be interested in this issue. But one thing that I have discovered is that many of those women who need privacy will use private post offices to avoid the husband or some other individual who may be stalking them. They have been writing to me with a great deal of concern about what these regulations will do.

Also, it is a great cost to these operators as well as to all the customers. The Post Office would mandate that a special address be placed on each piece of mail, indicating that they are receiving mail at one of these private post offices. This costs a lot of money. There will be a lot of mail returned. If these regulations had gone into effect this week, as had been planned, a lot of mail, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pieces, if not millions, would have been returned to the senders, and they would not have been permitted to be delivered.

I think this is tragic. I think it has to be dealt with. I am disappointed that we cannot do much with it today, but I know there is a growing support in this country and in this Chamber for doing something about this problem.

We as a Congress have the ability, and the authority, to undo regulations. For too long, we have allowed our regulatory bodies to write law, and we do nothing about it. Since 1994, we have had this authority, but we never use it. This is a perfect example of a time that we ought to come in and protect the people, try to neutralize this government monopoly and help these people who deserve this type of protection and privacy.