Posted on 04/12/2020 6:21:20 PM PDT by Hojczyk
U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform late last week in a video that unless the U.S. Postal Service gets a federal bailout it will run out of money by the end of September.
Mail volume has fallen steeply in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and the federal agency is expecting the same downward turn in revenues.
At a time when America needs the Postal Service more than ever, the reason we are so needed is having a devastating effect on our business,” Brennan said in the statement. “The Postal Service relies on the sale of postal products and services to fund our operations, and these sales are plummeting as a result of the pandemic. The sudden drop in mail volumes, our most profitable revenue stream, is steep and may never fully recover.”
“The USPS said the pandemic will increase its net operating loss by more than $22 billion over the next 18 months and by over $54 billion over the coming years,” Huffington Post reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Kramer finally gets his wish.
I'd rather drive to the PO and pick it up there.
Plus I'm getting used to the PO dropping off Amazon packages on Sundays at the door rather than at the mailbox all the way out at the end of the driveway.
Hillary is close to Postal workers. Maybe she could help out.
Billions in government aide to the post office means ‘You can have a $10 billion dollar loan to cover diminished operation revenue in the middle of a pandemic, but only if 4.5 billion of it goes to pre-fund benefits for 75 years.’
Without the extraordinary pre-funding mandate that only USPS has to do, the USPS would have had a net profit of over 3 billion a year for the last 10 years. That’s 30 billion dollars that should be in the bank for a contingency like this (or modernizing the fleet; the newest LLV (that workhorse of most every carrier) is 30 years old.)
The USPS Fairness Act passed the House with over 2/3rds support, it is the perfect place to put USPS special funding for during the pandemic as well as to start addressing the modernization costs that have been put off for far too long.
Go after Amtrak all you want, but the USPS which still has to contend with Congress setting the price of the common postage stamp isn’t anywhere near the same boat.
The GOV screws up everything it touches.
Turn it over to UPS for a dollar and you will see it turn a profit. But a lot of lazy union GOV employees are going to be jobless
Trump already closed the Chinese fastpass into USPS, it goes into effect in June, one of the very very very rare victories the United States has had with the International Postal Board. Still want universal ONLINE tracking for every international parcel. We give it, but even Canada stiffs us on that one (and don't even talk about how badly Mexico shafts us on that...)
Economics is what she’s talking about. Kinda complicated, but it takes all mail streams (parcel, small parcel, first class, standard (bulk rate) class and contract delivery) to keep up the delivery efficiency. Take one away (such as the bulk mailers who have drastically reduced mailings), a heavy shift to electronic statements by banks during COVID, that’s a huge drop in mail volume.
You lose one of the 5 legs, the cost per delivery goes up for everything else. The post office isn’t a free for all, every moment is accounted for and clocked.
There are alternatives; doing mailbox delivery for 4 days a week would balance some of the legs, but you’d still have to keep parcel delivery up as so many people get medicines by mail. (another thing which COVID has affected, many prescriptions have been temporarily extended to 90 days which were only 30 before, or a lot of common medications jumped to 180 days.
And there’s always been the ‘pie in the sky’ conversion of stations into banks as well. Something which has a huge amount of regulatory hurdles, most notably the Charter Bank Act with essentially forbids banks unless they are chartered in an incorporated city. Many postal stations are not located in incorporated cities.
There’s a lot of options for the postal service for the future, just have to get there.
Megan Brennan should not admit to working for the USPS. Everyone knows that the USPS punishes hard workers and rewards the lazy who take two hour lunches.
Any new company can do a better job that USPS for cheaper. Just give any new company the awesome machines at each post office.
“The new mailing/shipping entity will be called UPSEx.”
Reminds me of how Stephen Wright, the comedian, said that the new merger would be Fed UP.
Yep. Been busy!
rather than a bailout, USPS should be pressured to charge at least what it costs to mail all of those amazon and ebay packages instead of taking losses on every one of them, with the difference made up by we taxpayers, where every subsidized taxpayer dollar goes directly into Jeff Bezos’ pocket!
perhaps if the USPS was TRULY faced with actual bankruptcy instead of another bailout, their Obama-appointee-dominated board of directors would finally be forced to raise package rates .. btw, making the big online sellers pay actual mailing costs would benefit mom and pop brick and mortar retail stores as well by removing an element of unfair competition paid for with taxpayer money ...
Just an idea.
Thank goodness.
This is fantastic news. However, and as we all know, Congress with ‘bail out’ the USPS and stick taxpayers with the bill.
JoMa
At one of the Task Force briefings, Trump was asked about it - he responded by saying they dug their own hole and have been losing billions for years by doing stupid things - like losing money on most shipments from Amazon and other etailers...I got the sense he’ like it to go pure commercial so it had to make good decisions to survive...and end the “very generous” retirement packages that all those making the bad decisions, and the minions who carry them out, enjoy.
I reread the Postal Clause; it appears only to be an enumerated power of Congress. So they’re free to fund post offices as much or as little as they see fit. It doesn’t seem to be an obligation, as so many have argued over the years. You could argue that it’s in the national interest, but then it should be weighed against other national interests.
I am a letter carrier in a small town in Kentucky. We have six rural routes and 2 full city routes and one 2 hr route. Mondays are our largest volume days, except day after holidays, we have been splitting up the 2 hr route Tuesdays through Saturdays for over a year. Our substitute goes to other post offices to fill in for sick, vacation, days off, all the post offices in our district send their subs to do the same thing. The larger cities have many union carriers that abuse the system, call in sick, slow down, generally try to get away with working as little as possible, those of us who are hard working and dedicated to doing a good job, have to take up the slack and work even harder and faster to get mail and packages out in our eight hour day. We have to be back at 4 every day, no matter the volume, our outgoing truck leaves at 430 PM, we are squeezed by district managers constantly, while the larger post offices get away with everything. 25+ years at post office, we have always been squeezed because of other post offices failing to pick up their productivity. I could be more detailed but you get the idea.
I get the idea. You are employed by the government.
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