This is the busy season—in fact the busiest—for the United States Postal Service (USPS). On the Holiday section of its website, an active counter of mail and packages delivered stands, as of this writing, at 7.7 billion (and still counting).

As Donald Trump prepares for his own change of address, he’s been reportedly discussing with his transition team his interest in privatizing the postal service. When asked in his first post-election press conference about talk of privatizing the service, Trump said, “Not the worst idea I ever heard.” Considering  the ideas of some of the people he surrounds himself with—including cabinet picks—that’s not a big surprise: There is probably a lot of competition for worst idea he’s ever heard. But it’s also not a big surprise because he floated the idea during his first administration.

That plan went nowhere. Even supporters of longer-term privatization note that it would mean the cost of First Class mail would “increase dramatically” and result in a “huge shock” to the post office and consumers.

More importantly, as it turns out, the postal service is pretty popular with the public—second only to the National Parks among federal agencies and, therefore, pretty popular with members of Congress. It may well be he’s pushing the public imagination to an extreme so that when he comes out with additional privatization schemes—air traffic control, Medicaid, the TSA—threatening to privatize the post office might just be a negotiation tactic.

That might come as a relief to the millions who rely on the postal service, especially rural Americans who would likely be the first ones to lose services under any privatization plan.

But even if Trump is unable to achieve a full privatization, there’s always the possibility of privatization creep accomplishing that goal bit-by-bit. In fact, the incoming chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which oversees the USPS, is Sen. Rand Paul, who told Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy the service should make no new government hires and should instead contract out for new staff.

The postal service has embedded in its foundational document a “universal service obligation,” meaning it must, by statute, be available to all Americans. Like schools, parks, and libraries, it serves everyone. It’s not allowed to exclude or discriminate. It’s a public service for the public good.

The statute that created the service lays out exactly its function, in terms we may one day find quaint: to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary and business correspondence of the people.

That’s what public things do: bind the nation together. And that’s why In The Public Interest does what we do.

Donald Cohen
Executive Director