Order Code RS22203
July 22, 2005

CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web

Free Mail for Troops Overseas
Nye Stevens
Specialist in American National Government
Government and Finance Division
Summary
Members of the armed forces on duty in designated combat areas can send
personal correspondence, free of postage, to addresses in the United States. There has
never been a comparable provision of free postage for letters or packages sent from
family members in the United States to loved ones in wartime service overseas. Two
bills (H.R. 923 and H.R. 2874) have been introduced that would allow family
members and, in the case of H.R. 2874, certain charities to send letters and packages
to servicemen and women in combat zones free of postage.

This report analyzes both proposals. It will be updated in the event of any
legislative action on the bills.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has long had a relationship with the Department of
Defense which is designed to facilitate correspondence and the exchange of gifts between
service personnel and their families. Post offices throughout the country accept mail and
packages for military personnel and deliver them to military installations in the United
States. Overseas military mail delivery is a little more complicated. USPS delivers mail
and packages to army/air force post office (APO) and fleet post office (FPO) gateway
sites in New York, Newark, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago. Domestic postage
covers the cost of this service. The cost of transporting the mail from those sites to
service members overseas is borne by the military mail service, though USPS commonly
arranges for the transportation and is reimbursed by the military. In a sense, then, the
postage cost is a bargain, because the actual costs of distribution throughout the world to
dispersed military units greatly exceed the normal costs on which domestic postage rates
are based.

When the armed forces are engaged in combat or other dangerous activities, the
President has authority under 39 U.S.C. §3401 to permit service members to send
personal correspondence free of charge to places within the delivery limits of a U.S. post
office. This privilege is currently available to service members in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
certain surrounding countries and seas, and to service personnel hospitalized in a military
facility as a result of disease or injury resulting from service in the designated areas.1 The
________________________________________________________________________
1 The authority was delegated to the Secretary of Defense by Executive Order 12556 on April 18,
(continued...)

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

CRS-2

Defense Department pays USPS for the costs of delivering this mail from the U.S.
gateway sites to any domestic address. Free mail must have a complete APO or FPO
return address and the word “free” written in the upper right corner with an APO or FPO
postmark.

However, it has never been authorized for citizens in the United States to send mail to
service members, whether overseas or not, without paying postage. During World War II,
the government created “V-Mail” as a means for Americans to correspond with loved
ones overseas. In order to economize on weight and space, V-Mail letters were written on
forms that could be purchased at retail stores or the post office. The forms were
microfilmed, dispatched around the world, and then reproduced at a mail center near the
recipient’s location. No enclosures were permitted. V-Mail letters were sent free of
postage by members of the armed forces, but when sent by others, they carried pre-paid
postage at the standard rates that prevailed then — three cents for ordinary mail, and six
cents for air mail.

Today, sending packages to service members overseas can be quite expensive. It costs
$86.50 to send a 20-pound package by international Express Mail from the United States
to Iraq. USPS will charge domestic postage of $53.45 to send a 20-pound package from a
ZIP Code in Michigan to an APO address in New York (but destinating in Europe) by
Express Mail. On the other hand, it can be much less expensive to send the same package
to the same address by Priority Mail ($19.75), Parcel Post ($11.98), or, for books, the
Media Mail rate ($7.84). There is limited advantage to using Express Mail rates to speed
a package bound for Iraq to New York overnight, when the package will then be turned
over to the military mail delivery system and be treated like all other packages for
transport overseas to military units. It might save three or four days at the outset of the
package’s journey, but will not result in expedited service overseas, which is likely to be
a journey of many more days.2

Should Mail Sent to Service Members Overseas be Free?

Constituents frequently contact Members of Congress with the suggestion that the
free mail privilege should be extended to letters and packages sent from this country and
addressed to American armed forces personnel serving in dangerous areas overseas. They
point out that because such communication is an important link with home and
contributes to morale, it would make sense to remove any economic disincentives to send
letters, photos, “care packages,” or audio tapes to those in active military operations.
They suggest that it is a commonsense extension of the already existing subsidy for such
items to be sent from combat areas to home.

The case for free mail to overseas service members is not quite comparable to that
of free mail privileges for soldiers, however. For troops in a wartime situation, U.S.
________________________________________________________________________

1 (...continued)
1986. For a current list of overseas assignment locations eligible for the free mail privilege, see
“Free Mail Program,” Postal Bulletin 22097, March 6, 2003, p. 26, available at
[http://www.usps.com/cpim/ftp/bulletin/2003/pb22097.pdf]

2 On the other hand, USPS says that it does meet the three-day guaranteed delivery standard for
Express Mail to long-established bases in Germany and other European countries.



CRS-3

postage stamps, and American coins to purchase them, are likely not to be readily
available. The population of eligible soldiers is somewhat confined, and
collection/authorization of the mail limited to a relatively few APO and FPO locations.
Their economic circumstances may also be more constricted than those of correspondents
in United States, on the whole.

Extending free mailing privileges to anyone in the United States who wishes to
communicate with American soldiers could involve some practical difficulties. Removing
any cost considerations essentially would give anyone with printing equipment, an
address list, and a message free license to flood the mails, in ways that might not always
be appreciated by recipients. Large-scale communications such as from advertisers,
religious organizations, or pro-war or anti-war groups might be difficult to exclude. If
eligibility were limited to family members of service personnel, this would add a burden
of verification on postal clerks to determine who qualifies as “family.”

Handling mail that substitutes the handwritten word “free” for a postage stamp or
indicia also will incur some added processing costs. Current postage rates are based on
heavy use of automation; for example, the initial sorting of most mail is fully automated,
as “facer-canceller” machines sense chemicals in postage stamps, turn the envelopes
forward and right side up, cancel the stamps, read address bar codes, and send mail to
sorting trays without human intervention. Individual pieces of mail sent without postage,
indicia, or bar codes, would involve some degree of non-automated handling and perhaps
some verification of the relationship to the recipient. The Postal Service would no doubt
expect to be reimbursed through congressional appropriations for its costs in providing
free or discounted service to a segment of the population, just as it is currently
reimbursed for services it provides for the blind and overseas voters.3

Legislation in the 109th Congress

Legislation has been introduced in previous years to provide free mailing privileges
for letters and packages to American troops overseas. Two bills have been introduced
into the 109th Congress — H.R. 923 and H.R. 2874. (H.R. 2874 supercedes H.R. 887, a
very similar bill introduced by Representative Ford on February 17, 2005.)

H.R. 923, the Mailing Support to Troops Act of 2005 (introduced on February 17,
2005 by Representative Fossella, with 71 current cosponsors), would allow family
members of service personnel to mail letters and packages free of charge to active
members of the military serving in Afghanistan or Iraq and to servicemen and women
hospitalized as a result of disease or injury suffered in Afghanistan or Iraq. Mailers would
only need to write on the envelope or box “‘Free Matter for Member of the Armed Forces
of the United States’ or words to that effect [as] specified by the Postal Service.” Mail
matter that contains any advertising would specifically be excluded. H.R. 923 would
authorize appropriations to reimburse USPS for its extra expenses in transporting such
mail. The bill was referred to the Committee on Government Reform, where no action
has been taken on it to date.
________________________________________________________________________

3 For more information on existing free mail subsidies, see CRS Report RS21025, The Postal
Revenue Forgone Appropriation, Overview and Current Issues,
by Nye Stevens.



CRS-4

H.R. 2874, the Supply Our Soldiers Act of 2005, was introduced by Representative
Ford on June 14, 2005, and has 31 cosponsors. It would attempt to make it easier for
families and charities to ship letters and packages to soldiers serving in combat zones.
Soldiers mobilizing for overseas duty would be given an allotment of special stamps
(equivalent in value to $150 per calendar quarter) that they can send to their loved ones,
or to selected charities, to allow them to send letters and packages without further postage
to the service members. There would be a 10-pound limit on packages sent to individuals.
The Postal Service would be reimbursed by the Defense Department for providing this
service, and section 3 of the bill authorizes appropriations to the Defense Department for
this purpose and for any other expenses it incurs. By putting individual service men and
women into the authorization chain for the mail they receive, this bill would avoid the
problem of subsidizing unsolicited mail to the troops. Additionally, by capping the
allotment per service member, it would mitigate potential stress on the military postal
system. H.R. 2874 was referred to the Committees on Armed Services and Government
Reform.