For many years, postal reform was the poster child of a do-little Congress.

Each U.S. Postal Service financial report was more bleak than the last, accompanied by increasingly dire doomsday predictions. Yet pleas for help generated much talk on Capitol Hill and no action. Management and labor had stark differences, controversial plans to end six-day mail delivery sucked up much of the energy, and the acidic partisan divide always loomed.

There’s still plenty of talk, as demonstrated at a three-hour Senate hearing Thursday. But movement now seems more likely than it has in a long time.

Critical points of legislation introduced by Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) were embraced at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing.   Read more…