Order Code RS22203
Updated August 22, 2006
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.
In a markup on September 29, 2005, the House Committee on Government Reform
reported H.R. 923 in amended form as a bill that would allow service members overseas
to send vouchers to family or loved ones that would be redeemable for the postage
expenses of one letter or 15-pound package per month. The text of H.R. 923 later
passed the House as sections 575, 576, and 577 of H.R. 5122, the FY2007 Defense
Authorization Act. The version of H.R. 5122 that passed the Senate on June 22, 2006,
does not contain the provision relating to mail for service members overseas.
This report will be updated in the event of any further legislative action.
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
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

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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
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 micro-
filmed, 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.
1 The authority was delegated to the Secretary of Defense by Executive Order 12556 on April 18,
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.

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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.
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 supersedes 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), in its original form 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. H.R. 923 was referred to the Committee on Government Reform.
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.

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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 would authorize 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.
On September 29, 2005, the House Committee on Government Reform marked up
H.R. 923, and in doing so, accepted an amendment in the nature of a substitute that
adopted the core concept, as well as the title, of H.R. 2874. As amended and ordered to
be reported by voice vote of the Committee, H.R. 923 requires the Department of
Defense, in consultation with the Postal Service, to establish a one-year program under
which qualified members of the armed services would receive a monthly voucher that can
be redeemed, by their families or friends, to pay the postal expenses of sending one letter
or parcel (weighing up to 15 pounds) to the service member. The Department of Defense
would reimburse the Postal Service for the postal benefits provided by the vouchers.
Committee Chairman Tom Davis said that the substitute language had the approval of
Representative Fossella, the Committee on Armed Services, and the Postal Service. The
Congressional Budget Office estimated that nearly all of the about 145,000 American
service personnel who would be eligible for the postage benefit would take advantage of
it, and assigned it a budget cost of $30 million over fiscal years 2006 and 2007.4
The language of H.R. 923 was added by the House Armed Services Committee as
sections 575, 576 (“Funding”), and 577 (“Duration”) to H.R. 5122, the Sonny
Montgomery National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. H.R. 5122 was
passed by the House on May 11, 2006. On June 22, 2006, the Senate substituted its own
defense authorization language for the House language and passed H.R. 5122. The Senate
version does not contain the postal benefits authorized in the House bill, so whether the
language survives is now a matter to be decided by the conference committee.

4 This assumed enactment in Dec., 2005. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Government
Reform, Supply Our Soldiers Act of 2005, report to accompany H.R. 923, 109th Cong., 2nd sess.,
H.Rept. 109-268 (Washington: GPO, 2005), pp. 7-9.

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