Bold writing is mine
From the postal workers union:
Let me provide some facts about the USPS, so readers will have context when they hear such things.
Let me provide some facts about the USPS, so readers will have context when they hear such things.
For starters, the Postal Service doesn't use a dime of taxpayer money and hasn't for more than a quarter-century. Its revenue comes from selling its products and services, at the best rates in the industrialized world. Customer satisfaction and on-time delivery are at record highs. (Maybe the Postal Service should be taking public funds. Bill Gates being to keep more of his pocket change is not as important to me as a civilized society right to have a mail service. What kind of culture do we want to live in?)
Furthermore, USPS' financial problems have surprisingly little to do with delivering the mail. In the past four fiscal years, despite the worst recession in 80 years and despite Internet diversion, revenues from postal operations exceeded costs by $611 million.
The problem lies elsewhere: the 2006 congressional mandate that the USPS pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade, an obligation no other public agency or private firm faces. The roughly $5.5 billion annual payments since 2007 — $21 billion total — are the difference between a positive and negative ledger. (Who could have believed the anti-union George W. Bush and his anti-union Republican congress, taking a bundle of money from outside private delivery services would want to privatize the union)
That's the elephant in the room — not Saturday mail delivery, not post offices that serve urban or rural areas. Remove this onerous pre-funding obligation and the Postal Service would have been profitable even during this economic downturn, and periods with losses would be manageable. But we're not even asking that it be removed. (Who could also believe that the majority of the news would offer an analysis that looks like it was written for them).
What USPS management, unions and key Republican and Democratic legislators ask of Congress is simply this: Let the Postal Service stop depleting its operating funds to make these payments and instead allow an internal transfer of funds from its pension surpluses. This responsible business move, with zero taxpayer involvement, would leave pensions and retiree health benefits fully funded well into the future while putting the USPS budget back on sound financial footing.
Several bills filed by Senate and House legislators of both parties call for this. It addresses the actual financial drain, as opposed to the self-defeating attempts to decimate services as the agency tries to find $5.5 billion every Sept. 30 for the pre-funding payments.
Among the bad ideas this frenzy has produced is ending Saturday delivery — eliminating 17 percent of service to save 2 percent in costs. Moreover, it would inconvenience millions of residents who rely on Saturday delivery of medicines and small businesses that are open Saturday, while reducing USPS market share.
If Congress remedies the crushing burden it imposed, then the postal community can focus in a thoughtful manner on adapting, as it always has, to society's evolving needs. Faced with the telegraph, the telephone and other innovations, the Postal Service inevitably found new and better ways to serve residents and businesses.
Today, the Internet offers both challenges and opportunities. While more people now pay bills online, more people also order online — and those goods must be delivered. Already, last-mile Postal Service delivery of packages for FedEx and UPS is a profit-maker.
Moreover, the Postal Service is the central element in a $1.3 trillion U.S. mailing industry that supports 7 million to 8 million private-sector jobs. And its universal delivery network is invaluable in untold ways. When the Department of Homeland Security sought ways to distribute medicines to residents in the event of a biological attack, it turned to the Postal Service. The result: A Cities Readiness Initiative already in place in Minneapolis, with letter carriers volunteering, and a second pilot program underway in Louisville, Ky.
For full details: http://www.nalc.org/PostalFacts/index.html
One comment on Huff postmade wise comment, "The USPS is not allowed to set its' own rates, they are set by congress. The USPS is not allowed to compete in the market but is blamed for insolvency
A really fine article of the gradual privitization is here: http://triapwu.org/library/privatization.php
