(concurring and dissenting).
Because I do not perceive plaintiff to possess the remedy accorded him by both the majority and the district court I do not reach the merits of the claim. Accordingly I concur in that portion of the result reached by the majority which reverses the judgment of the district court and dissent from so much of the result which affirms.
I have extreme difficulty in reconciling the majority’s treatment of standing with the extremely exhaustive treatment of the standing principles set forth in Richardson v. United States, 465 F.2d 844, 857-874 (Dissenting Opinion by Adams, J., in which Aldisert and Hunter, JJ., joined) (3d Cir. 1972), cert. granted, 410 U.S. 953, 93 S.Ct. 1420, 35 L.Ed.2d 686 (1973). Consistent with my own position in Richardson, I disagree with the majority’s determination of standing on the basis of the principles therein set forth by Judge Adams.
I.
Judge Adams’ Richardson dissent was an anthology of principles and it can be stated without undue generosity that the *432majority’s discussion on pages 320-425 is a continuation of the overview of standing. What divided the court in Richardson, as what divides this court, and indeed what usually confronts any court in which a standing issue is raised, is not a conflict over the definition of principles, but a question of the application of those principles to the circumstances of the case.
Accordingly, I cannot begin to accept the majority’s characterization of those principles as “questionable [and not reflecting] the views of a majority of this Court.” The Richardson majority challenged only the applicability, and not the authenticity, of the principles set forth by Judge Adams.
What divides this panel, then, is that which divided the Richardson court, what Cardozo described as a case “where the rule of law is certain, and the application alone doubtful.”1
For my part, I have grave discomfort in equating a standing standard applicable to economic competitors claiming standing to review administrative regulations, Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970), with a claimant who at best seems to be a taxpayer asserting rights associated with a candidacy for Congress.
“We begin with the proposition that . [Schiaffo] is a plaintiff, not a defendant, and therefore cases conferring standing upon defendants are somewhat inapplicable. Because expenditures [or lack of expenditures for postage] are attacked, Flast2 and Frothingham 3 would appear to create a barrier at least insofar as [Schiaffo’s] standing as a taxpayer is concerned. Third, the Administrative Procedure Act cases are not controlling because [in] the challenged [Congressional] action . . . there have been no administrative procedural irregularities pleaded. Finally, the plaintiff has not alleged that the Congressional . . . action at issue has violated First Amendment rights or other rights previously assigned a position of paramount importance.
“Accordingly, we are left with the questions of the relative importance of the asserted . . . [federal] right and the nature of the injury suffered by the plaintiff.” Richardson v. United States, 465 F.2d at 871 (Adams, J., Dissenting) (footnotes added).
The district court found that plaintiff was not entitled to money damages because “the real damages that have accrued from abuse of the frank are those to the taxpayer.”4 (Emphasis supplied). This is a critical finding. It conclusively demonstrates that as a matter of law, plaintiff “has merely a general interest common to all members of the public,” Ex parte Lévitt, 302 U.S. 633, 634, 58 S.Ct. 1, 82 L.Ed. 493 (1937). Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 13, 92 S.Ct. 2318, 33 L.Ed.2d 154 (1972) continued the vitality of Lévitt.
The majority candidly recognizes that this critical conclusion of law reached by the district court destroys completely the threshold requirement of Data Processing and attempts to assign three reasons why the District Court’s clear language cannot possibly mean what it says. First, the majority says “this language might be considered ambiguous. *433. ” I disagree. The district court not only found that “the real damages that have accrued from abuse of the frank are those to the taxpayer,” but also that an award of “such damages would prove an unfair windfall to the plaintiff.” (Emphasis supplied). I find this to be capable of no reasonable interpretation than a declaration by the court (1) that any damage caused by the improper use of Congressional franking-was sustained by all the taxpayers who paid taxes for the subsidization of this privilege, and (2) any award to plaintiff would be a windfall because in this context he is simply another taxpayer.
The majority continues: “Second, . standing exists or does not exist at the time a complaint is filed. Thus, Schiaffo’s ultimate failure to recover money damages should not weigh heavily in the inquiry as to his standing.” (Footnote omitted). I cannot accept any notion that standing may be conferred upon a plaintiff simply because he makes an averment in his complaint that he is entitled to money damages. Such a notion cuts across every —absolutely every — reported case from the Supreme Court, court of appeals, and district court in the judge-made law of standing. Entitlement to standing is a question of law to be decided by the court; standing cannot be a self-generating, self-serving entitlement, generated by a naked averment in the plaintiff’s complaint. There is a fundamental difference between the failure of a fact-finder to award damages because of lack of proof of damages, and a refusal of a court to award damages as a matter of law because the alleged damage was sustained by all taxpayers, and not the plaintiff in his own right.
If I follow the majority’s third reason, and I confess to extreme difficulty in understanding it,5 it seems to suggest this: (1) an injunction in futuro will assist plaintiff “as a candidate and member of the opposition political party.” (2) Plaintiff has standing because this court’s decision has only stare decis-is effect in this judicial circuit. Patent incongruity inheres in a proposition which is anchored on one side by a contention that the abuse of the franking privilege causes financial damage to all taxpayers, and then drifts to a notion that this plaintiff is entitled to future injunctive relief because he was a candidate in the past. The limited stare de-cisis comment scarcely merits mention. But the fatal deficiency of the attempt to meet Data Processing’s first requirement is laid bare in the majority’s summation :
Since it would seem that even a taxpayer suffers injury in fact from an unauthorized use of the frank, it follows that under our view of the nature of Schiaffo’s interest he has suffered injury in fact, thereby meeting the first part of the Data Processing test. (Majority Op. 425).
As muddled as the law of standing may seem to be, one pristine principle has remained inviolate: the plaintiff must have a personal stake in the out*434come of the controversy other than the mere fact that he pays taxes. Flast v. Cohen, supra; Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962); Frothingham v. Mellon, supra.
Judge Adams put it thusly in Richardson:
[S]uits designed to interfere with the orderly operation of the Government, particularly with regard to taxation and appropriations, will not be entertained except in narrowly-defined circumstances. See Flast v. Cohen, supra; Frothingham v. Mellon, supra; W. Lockhart, Y. Kamisar & J. Choper, . . . [Constitutional Law] 68 [1970],
Closely related to this principle is the admonition that a citizen who suffers equally with all other citizens will not be heard to raise generalized grievances about the conduct of the Government. See Sierra Club v. Morton, . . . [405 U.S. 727, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972)]; Flast v. Cohen, supra; Baker v. Carr, supra; Ex parte Lévitt, supra; Frothingham v. Mellon, supra; Fairchild v. Hughes, . . . [258 U.S. 126, 42 S.Ct. 274, 11 L.Ed. 499 (1972)].
465 F.2d at 870.
I respectfully suggest that Judge Adams’ expression as a dissenter in Richardson was eminently correct and that Judge Adams’ expression as the author of the majority opinion is egregiously wrong. Accordingly, I am drawn to his conclusion in Richardson:
Because . . . [Schiaffo] did not and could not allege that either he alone or some identifiable class of citizens has suffered an injury not suffered by everyone else, the conclusion would appear to follow that “he has merely a general interest common to all members of the public,” [Ex parte Lévitt, 302 U.S. 633, 634, 58 S.Ct. 1, 82 L.Ed. 493 (1937)] and therefore is not endowed with standing to litigate this matter.
465 F.2d at 872-843.
Precise teachings of the Supreme Court support this conclusion. When a private individual, a “citizen” and “taxpayer,” sought to challenge the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, the Court held that his “alleged interest in the question submitted . . . [was] not such as to afford a basis for [the suit].” Fairchild, supra, 258 U.S. at 129, 42 S.Ct. at 275. The plaintiff had “only the right, possessed by every citizen, to require that the government be administered according to law and that the public moneys not be wasted.” Ibid. In Ex Parte Lévitt, supra, a citizen sought to attack the appointment of a Supreme Court justice. The Court noted that the “[m]otion papers disclose [d] no interest upon the part of the petitioner other than that of a citizen and a member of the bar of . [the] Court.” The Court went on to say:
That is insufficient. It is an established principle that to entitle a private individual to invoke the judicial power to determine the validity of executive or legislative action he must show that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining a direct injury as the result of that action and it is not sufficient that he has merely a general interest common to all members of the public.
302 U.S. at 634, 58 S.Ct. at 1. Voters in Baker, supra, were “asserting ‘a plain, direct and adequate interest in maintaining the- effectiveness of their votes,’ Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. [433] at 438, [59 S.Ct. 972, 83 L.Ed. 1385,] not merely a claim of ‘the right, possessed by every citizen, “to require that Government be administered according to law . .’ Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U.S. 126, 129, [42 S.Ct. 274], . . .” 369 U.S. at 208, 82 S.Ct. at 705. Accordingly, the Court held that the plaintiffs had standing to attack a state reapportionment plan. No such basic right of a citizen is asserted here. Rather standing is claimed on the basis of injury in fact sustained by - plaintiff as a taxpayer who “suffers injury in fact from an unauthorized use of the frank. .” Not one Supreme Court deci*435sion supports this approach. Indeed, the decisions explicitly reject such a notion.
II.
In the view I take, I may stop here. Since the majority concedes that Schiaf-fo’s only standing passport to federal court depends upon the “injury-in-fact” Data Processing validation, he has failed, in my view, to meet the first of the two mandated requirements.6
I am constrained to extend my views at greater length because the highly sophisticated attempt to meet the second of Data’s requirements proceeds from assumed facts, not in the record,, which I challenge; and from there, to induced consequences, which I find fallacious.
To meet Data’s second requirement— “whether the interest sought to be protected by the complainant is arguably within the zone of interests to be protected ... by the statute . . .”, 397 U.S. at 153, 90 S.Ct. at 830 — a congeries of intricacies is advanced. The argument begins with the proper statement that there is no explicit statutory authority conferring a private right of action to remedy an “injury caused by a congressman’s abuse of the privilege.”
As to the existence of statutory authority entitling “governmental entities” the right to pursue a remedy for such injuries, the argument gallops off in two directions. Initially, the suggestion is proffered that no such statutory authority exists.7 Alternatively, it contends that if such statutory authority to police Congress exists, the authority is deemed ineffective because “the plain fact is that since 1968, . . . [the Postal Service] has not attempted to do so.” I now address both contentions.
A.
First, I flatly disagree with the suggestion that no governmental agency has the power to police the Congressional franking privilege. This is an essential predicate of the theory if the majority conclusion is to possess threshold support. Having asserted lack of enforcement power in any governmental agency, the argument then builds to the proposition that any enforcement of the franking statute can only emanate from the public, generally through the device of private attorney general suits like the instant case. Lacking a specific statute authorizing private suits, the majority finds one by implication, thereby satisfying the second prong of the “zone of interest test” of Data Processing.
I have little difficulty in discerning the fallacy in the basic premise that Congress failed to provide a governmental agency with statutory power to enforce the franking statutes. The United States Postal Service has this authority. To me this authority is so apparent as not to merit extended discussion.
It is the United States Postal Service which suffers from improper use of franking. It is the United States Postal Service whose revenues are depleted as a result of improper franking practices. It is the United States Postal Service which, with its predecessor, the office of the Postmaster General, has a history of no juniority to any department of the Executive. It is the United States Postal Service whose establishment is constitutionally mandated, Art. 1, § 8, and whose power to enforce postage regulations is explicit in Title 39, United States Code, Sections 404(7); 409; 2605; 3216(a).
*436The existence of these statutory provisions forms a dramatic refutation to the contention that a private remedy is required to be implied from the statute, analogizing J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U.S. 426, 84 S.Ct. 1555, 12 L.Ed.2d 423 (1964), because there is no other way to police the use of franking privileges other than by private suit.
I reject completely and totally the majority’s conclusion: “None of the present or past statutes relating to the frank specifically grants any private individuals or governmental entities a remedy for injury caused by a congressman’s abuse of the privilege. We have found no evidence in the legislative history of the various enactments suggesting that Congress specifically considered the enforcement problem. There is not even a provision equivalent to § 27 of the Securities Exchange Act [15 U.S.C. § 78aa] indicating which courts have jurisdiction to entertain suits involving the statute.” (Maj.Op. at 426). (Footnotes omitted).
The quick answer is simply a reference to these statutes: The Postal Service is reimbursed for Congressional franked mailings in the form of “a lump-sum appropriation to the legislative branch . . . , and then paid to the Postal Service as postal revenue.” 39 U.S.C. § 3216(a). Reimbursement presupposes either a grant of credit or a payment of moneys; therefore, 39 U.S.C. § 2605 applies. This section provides : “The Postal Service shall request the Attorney General to bring a suit to recover . . . any payment made from moneys of, or credit granted by [it] as a result of mistake . . . [or] fraudulent representations. . . .” “[T]he United States district courts shall have original but not exclusive jurisdiction over all actions brought by or against the Postal Service.” 39 U.S.C. § 409(a). Moreover, the Postal Service may “investigate postal offenses and civil matters relating to the Postal Service,” 39 U.S.C. 404(7) and may bring suits in law, 39 U.S.C. 409. Unlike the general remedial statute used in Borak, 15 U.S.C. § 78aa,8 the enforcement statutes here are expressly limited. There is no room for implication in these remedial statutes that a private party may avail himself of this avenue of relief: “The Postal Service shall request the Attorney General to bring a suit to recover. . . .” 39 U.S.C. § 2605. “[T]he United States district courts shall have original but not exclusive jurisdiction over all actions brought by or against the Postal Service.” 39 U.S.C. § 409.
While it may be true, as the majority states that there is “no evidence in the legislative history [of §§ 3210-3212] suggesting that Congress specifically considered the enforcement problem,” this proves nothing. Enforcement is allocated to other statutes, to those statutes covering the Postal Service. The majority attempts to disprove point B (legislative history of enforcement of franking laws), instead of disproving point A (Postal Service enforcement), which is the real issue at stake. Logicians call this technique the fallacy of irrelevance, ignoratio elenchi.9
*437B.
But it is in the factual predicate asserted in the alternate theory which causes me grievous and abiding concern. The theory originates in these statements: “Nevertheless, since 1968 neither the Service nor any other executive department has sought to regulate the use of the frank. The Service’s abandonment of its regulatory activities is not surprising. . . . Although the Postal Service may well have the power to enforce the statutes, the plain fact is that since 1968, it has not attempted to do so.” (Maj.Op. 427).
If it be true that the Postal Service has not taken steps to enforce, there can be two and only two reasons for inaction: one, that there was not Congressional abuse to merit Postal Service intervention ; or two, such abuse did exist, but the Postal Service did nothing about it.
The majority ignores the first possibility completely, and without any supportive evidence in the record, it makes a factual assumption that congressmen did abuse the privilege. The majority then conclude that since the Postal Service has “abandoned” its regulatory activities, the franking statute may be enforced by private attorney general actions “if the intent of the statutes, as expressed by Congress, is to be effectuated.”
I refuse to be associated with any assumption that congressmen from 1968 to 1972 abused the franking privilege. Nor do I believe that it is appropriate for the federal judiciary, a correlative branch of the federal government, to proceed from such an assumption and to render a legal conclusion severely critical of Congressional practices.10
Even were this assumption legitimate, the conclusion sought to be drawn therefrom, to borrow an idiom from television, “self-destructs.” Building from the unsubstantiated hypothesis of Congressional abuse, the argument proceeds to the notion that the Postal Service will not police Congress because “the Service’s revenues are in no way depleted by unauthorized use of the frank”, and that therefore a private suit is the only remedy. Assuming, without conceding, the validity of the suggestion that there is no harm to the Postal Service because it gets the “lump-sum appropriation to the legislative branch . . . paid to the Postal Service as postal revenue” 39 U.S.C. 3216(a), and that therefore it is officially nonchalant in the presence of abuse by the Congress of the lump-sum appropriation, then the necessary corollary is that there can be only two possible injured parties: either the American taxpayers who foot the bill for the “lump sum appropriation to the legislative branch,” or the members of Congress themselves, who may claim a denial of the full use of the legitimate franking privilege fund. Clearly, plaintiff is not a member of Congress. Thus, he sues only as a taxpayer. If he is suing solely in a taxpayer capacity to redeem the loss to taxpayers generally, he lacks standing, as we have heretofore observed, under the analogous doctrine first enunciated in Massachusetts v. Mellon, supra, 262 U.S. at 488, 43 S.Ct. at 601: “The party who invokes the power must be able to show, not only that the . . . [practice] is invalid, but that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as the result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally.”
In sum, assuming the validity of the premise that the tests of Data Processing are applicable — and I have doubts that a “competitor” test may be used in a “taxpayer” context — the subsequent underpinnings of this thesis are extremely fragile, if not evanescent. Put*438ting aside the demonstration that Schiaffo does not meet the first test of Data Processing, even if he had, he was then required to meet the second test of coming “within the zone of interests to be protected * * * by the statute.” An attempt is made to meet this by concluding that the only means of enforcement is through the private suit. I have shown how this approach ignores the specific statutes providing for actions by or instituted for the Postal Service. Since the plaintiff is placed in the “zone of interest” only by an inferential process, since these inferences are based on two illicit minor premises — that there is no enforcement commitment in a governmental agency and implied Congressional abuses exist which go unchecked by governmental entities or agencies — the proffered syllogism is analytically unsound; being invalid, it must be rejected.
I find the plaintiff to lack standing. I would reverse the judgment of the district court and dismiss the complaint.
. Cardozo, Nature of the Judicial Process, 164.
. Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968).
. Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 43 S.Ct. 597, 67 L.Ed. 1078 (1923).
. The district court found :
But I am not unmindful of the fact that to permit damages against the defendant and thus to open the floodgates for damage actions against large numbers of Congressmen could wreak havoc with the daily workings of the Legislative Branch. Furthermore, the real damages that have accrued from abuse of the frank are those to the taxpayer. Although assessment of damages at the face value of postage which defendant should have used to mail the impermissibly distributed material would certainly serve to deter further violations of the statute, such damages would prove an unfair windfall to the plaintiff.
Appellant’s Appendix, 46a.
. “Third, even if we are to disregard Schiaf-fo’s damage claims, his remaining requests for injunctive relief are not primarily intended to be for the benefit of all citizens. The claims focus narrowly on specific activities of Congressman Helstoski and their effects on Schiaffo as a candidate and member of the opposition political party. Any construction that we give to §§ 3210-3212 will have stare decisis effect only in this circuit, and its precedential value elsewhere in eases involving different plaintiffs and defendants and, no doubt, different mailings, will depend on the persuasiveness of the reason supporting it. For example, should another plaintiff challenge the authority of a congressman other than Helstoski to make certain mailings under the frank, our decision here, it would seem, could have no res judicata effect in that case. Should Helstoski’s authority to make mailings other than those at issue here be challenged, our decision similarly would have no res judicata effect. Schiaffo, in short, is not launching a broadside attack on the use of the frank by congressmen generally.
Thus, the branding of Schiaffo’s interest as merely that of a taxpayer is not consistent with the allegations contained in his complaint, and it is to the complaint that we must look in disposing of the standing issue.” (Majority Op. p. 424).
. Another difficulty with the majority’s approach which I mention only and do not discuss in detail is the curious blending of standing principles relating to economic competition with those relating to taxpayers. Justice Douglas emphasized the distinction between the two: “Flast was a taxpayer’s suit. The present is a competitor’s suit. And while the two have the same Article III starting point, they do not necessarily track one another.” Data Processing, supra at 152, 90 S.Ct. at 829.
. “None of the present or past statutes relating to the frank specifically grants . any governmental entities a remedy for injury caused by a congressman’s abuse of the privilege.” (Maj.Op. 426).
. The district courts of the United States, and the United States courts of any Territory or other place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States shall have exclusive jurisdiction of violations of this chapter or the rules and regulations thereunder, and of all suits in equity and actions at law brought to enforce any liability or duty created by this chapter or the rules and regulations thereunder. Any criminal proceeding may be brought in the district wherein any act or transaction constituting the violation occurred. Any suit or action to enforce any liability or duty created by this chapter or rules and regulations thereunder, or to enjoin any violation of such chapter or rules and regulations, may be brought in any such district or in the district wherein the defendant is found or is an inhabitant or transacts business, and process in such cases may be served in any other district of which the defendant is an inhabitant or wherever the defendant may be found.
. Sahaldan, Ideas of the Great Philosophers, 16 (1966).
. The United States House of Representatives has delegated supervisory powers over franking and postal service to two committees : Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, Subcommittee on Postal Service of tlie Committee on Post Office and Civil Service. It is significant that the Committee on House Administration, United States House of Representatives, filed a brief ami-cus curiae in this case urging reversal.