Press Release No. 01-1

For Immediate Release

Contact: Robert E. McLean

Release No. 01-1

703-418-0390

January 8, 2001

bmclean@mailers.org

Mailers Council Adds Website for Hill Staffers

WASHINGTON, January 8, 2001—The Mailers Council, a coalition of the nation's largest mailers, has added a new section to its website designed exclusively for Capitol Hill Staffers working on postal issues. The new section, "For Hill Staffers," easily accessed from the Council's home page (www.mailers.org), offers concise fact sheets that describe the Postal Service, explain the postal rate-setting process, and list the concerns of mailers who pay millions of dollars in postage.

Over the last decade committee consolidations and the trend toward shorter careers on Capitol Hill have reduced staffers' institutional memory, and the number of staffers who focus on the Postal Service. To help improve staffers' understanding of postal issues, the site currently offers introductory facts sheets:

"USPS Background,"
"Any Postage Increase Is Never ‘Just’ a Penny to American Business,"
"Taxes Do Not Pay for Postage, and Haven’t Since 1982,"
"How the U.S. Postal Service Sets Postage Rates,"
"106th Congress Summary," and
"USPS Board of Governors and Postal Rate Commission Members."
new postal issues are introduced additional fact sheets will be added.

The Mailers Council is a coalition of over 50 corporations, nonprofit organizations and major mailing associations. Council members represent for-profit and nonprofit mailers that use the United States Postal Service to deliver correspondence, publications, parcels, greeting cards and payments. Collectively the Council accounts for as much as 70 percent of the nation's mail volume.

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