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Allowing the postal service to dump it's pension obligations on the taxpayers isn't the answer.
Postal Service Set To Default On Pension Payment For First Time, But Congress Could Easily Fix The Problem
In 2006, the Republican-led Congress passed an unnecessary law requiring the United States Postal Service to prefund its pension benefits for 75 years through a $5.5 billion annual payment. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA) is the only one of its kind for a government agency. On August 1st of this year, the Post Office will likely default for the first time in its history on its 2011 pension payment. If Congress does not act, it will also default on its 2012 payment due September 30th.
The requirement has drastically harmed the functions of the agency, which is used by almost every American. In July, USPS began closing offices around the country to meet the annual payment. By the time current downsizing plans are completed in 2014, Americans will see 229 processing plants closed and 28,000 jobs lost. In June, ten USPS employees launched a multi-day hunger strike to protest the cuts.
Without the pension payment, USPS would have a $1.5 billion surplus instead of a $20 billion shortfall. “[T]hese ongoing liquidity issues unnecessarily undermine confidence in the viability of the Postal Service among our customers,” said USPS spokesman David Partenheimer.
Postal Service cuts also threaten to increase economic inequality. A Reuters analysis released in February found that America’s poorest communities “stand to suffer most if the struggling agency moves ahead with plans to shutter thousands of post offices.”
A vast majority of postal offices under consideration for closure are located in rural areas, where poverty rates are higher than the national average. Nearly 90 percent of Americans without broadband access live in rural areas, making USPS cuts especially harmful to the pocketbooks of rural Americans.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...fault-congres/
Allowing the postal service to dump it's pension obligations on the taxpayers isn't the answer.
If USPS goes bankrupt, taxpayers will get the tax-payer pension liabilities anyway.
the Repug poison pill is nothing but nasty politics to destroy govt and unionized employees, with nothing to replace it.
If congress will just allow the USPS to downsize to a level it can support through it's own revenues then the taxpayers don't have to get stuck with anything.
That is what I've read as well. It is the retirement accounts that are killing the USPS. I would hate to see the USPS go, though. The USPS can be fixed, but it is most likely in need of some downsizing. The internet did take a good chunk of its business away. Some offices could be consolidated.
The local news here has talked about such consolidation. The processing centers at Vancouver WA. and Hillsboro OR have already been consolidated into Portland OR. This has been and will continue to happen across the nation. The problem is, it causes more transportation costs, requires almost as many people, and only saves on building related costs. In the end, it saves little money if any.
Huh, good points. With fuel prices so high I'd imagine that would be a problem.
As the article I posted shows, the biggest problem with the USPS is the Repug penalty of $5B/year off the top going to year 2075 pension requirements.
Judging by the amount of mail spam I get, USPS is still extremely important commercially to huge number of US business, large and small.
Apparently the USPS needs to eliminate pensions for all their employees. They clearly can't afford them.
That's not it at all. This $5B annual is a requirement to prefund a system that wasn't required having a prefund before. The rate is probably 10x the annual amount needed to maintain the funding. The 2006 law refereed to requires the USPS to pay up front, all future pension obligation costs to cover something like 70 years into the future.
This is nothing but a way for congress to get more money to spend, and they will. It will then put the future tax payers on the hook for USPS employee retirement plans, since congress will have spent the retirement fund, that will only exist on paper.
If the internet negatively impacted the cash flows of the USPS, could it possibly be AlGore's fault that the en y is in trouble? Just sayin'....
The statist with the Frenchy posting name can produce leftist talking points at a mind blowing rate. Very impressive and sad at the same time.
"Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"
cause I'm sure not feelin you have any intelligence. GFY
I didn't read the new posts yet, but when I saw this thread pop up again, I did some searches. The law removed the escrow accounts the postal service had to seed the future retirement. This however, was just a theft by congress, since it will now go into the general fund to be spent. Congress took and spent the postal services escrow account.
Saving the Post Office: Letter Carriers Consider Bringing Back Banking Services
On July 27, 2012, the National Association of Letter Carriers adopted a resolution at their national convention in Minneapolis to investigate the establishment of a postal banking system. The resolution noted that expanding postal services and developing new sources of revenue are important components of any effort to save the public post office and preserve living-wage jobs; that many countries have a long and successful history of postal banking, including Germany, France, Italy, Japan and the United States itself; and that postal banks could serve the nine million people who don't have a bank account and the 21 million who use usurious check cashers, giving low-income people access to a safe banking system. "A USPS [United States Postal Service] bank would offer a 'public option' for banking," concluded the resolution, "providing basic checking and savings - and no complex financial wheeling and dealing."
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10812...nking-services
Good idea.
Become a bank, and ask for trillions in TARP!
Is it potentially due to things like delivering too far rural and on weekends etc etc.
I mean I know it's a good service but no wonder they are dying, it would be bloody expensive to keep services like that running. I mean obviously people aren't using letters as much but stuff bought online has to be shipped somehow
...by UPS and FedEx...
Junk mail seems to be extremely important to business.
I thought you respected the cons ution. Article I Section 8 Clause 7. Check it out.
It only says we have to have a postal service, not a bloated, inefficient one, tbh... additionally, if we really wanted to get rid of it, we could amend that clause out of the Cons ution, tbh...
There is actually nothing wrong with the postal service revenue except that congress thought they could get them to operate at $5.5 billion in the black each year, and take it.
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