After lots of effort it looked like 2012 might finally be the year Congress passed legislation making major reforms at the U.S. Postal Service, a quasi-private corporation owned by the U.S. government that has been burning through money faster than a clean-energy company with a grant from the Obama Administration.

House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has been working for almost two years on a plan for real change at the U.S.P.S. Issa would give the U.S. Postmaster General the authority to make many of the same kind of tough calls a private-sector CEO must make in difficult times. As matters stand, he is a sort of emasculated government manager, with the operational restrictions that implies.