Description:
As ordered reported by the House Committee on Natural Resources on May 15, 2013
CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 1384 would have no significant costs to the federal government. Enacting the bill would affect direct spending, but such costs would not be significant. Because the legislation would affect direct spending, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. Enacting the bill would not affect revenues.
H.R. 1384 would direct the United States Postal Service to issue a special postage stamp for first-class mail that would cost participating customers at least 15 percent more than the regular rate. Any amount collected from the special stamp (called a semipostal), after accounting for the Postal Service’s administrative costs, would be transferred to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and would be available for spending on programs to support the National Wildlife Refuge System. The Postal Service would have 12 months after enactment to make the semipostal available to the public, and the program would terminate no sooner than two years after that.
Payments of amounts above the regular first-class postage rate (currently 46 cents) would be treated as offsetting collections (that is, negative outlays) of the Postal Service. Based on sales of other semipostals in recent years, we expect that the increase in offsetting collections would be less than $1 million annually. Payments of those funds to the USFWS would be outlays of the Postal Service and offsetting collections to the USFWS, which would spend those amounts mostly in the same year. CBO estimates that the net change in outlays of the Postal Service (which is classified as off-budget) and the USFWS (which is classified as on-budget ) would not be significant in any year.
H.R. 1384 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and would not affect the budgets of state, local, or tribal governments.
