Posted on 09/05/2011 3:39:39 AM PDT by tobyhill
The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.
“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.
The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.
As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.
At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the agency’s predicament on Tuesday. So far, feuding Democrats and Republicans in Congress, still smarting from the brawl over the federal debt ceiling, have failed to agree on any solutions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yes, and the only reason they're having to prepay retiree health benefits, unlike any other federally-governed organization, is because the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress mandated it.
These union-toady Democrats DELIBERATELY orchestrated this outcome, sucking the lifeblood out of the USPS in order to enrich the unions, and insuring that any bailout by a future Congress would be a bailout of the UNIONS, not mail delivery.
If it weren't for that mandate, if it weren't for the 110th Congress' boot on their neck, the USPS would have a $600 million-plus SURPLUS by now.
The American Postal Workers Union president said:
The underlying cause of its financial crisis is the unreasonable, congressional mandate that requires the USPS to pre-fund future retiree healthcare costs. The Postal Service should be let off the hook when it comes to these payments because no other government agency or private business bears this burden.
So apparently even the parasites are beginning to understand that their hosts will die if they suck too much blood and pile on too many chains.
Of course it would, because everyone else would be paying for your mail delivery too.
It’s all kind of beside the point anyway since the only reason the Postal Service is on track to need a tax subsidy in the first place is because of the 110th Congress and their big fat sloppy gift to Postal labor unions.
And she is a “close friend”?...
Yes, she is. I do not agree with her politics nor her principles but she is still a friend.
I have other friends with their own personal failings. Should I abandon them, or keep praying for their enlightenment?
OOPS!!
It depends....folks in many suburbs, country roads and even some city neighborhoods have mounted mail boxes at the end of their driveways out on the road. Many other older city neighborhoods have mail boxes on their porches or slots in their front doors so walking postal workers are necessary. I’ve lived in differing communities and I have seen both types of deliveries....the walkers and the drivers.
First, I didn’t know that postal service was specifically in the constitution... So that was my ignorance/error...
Second, I didn’t “read past what I didn’t like in the constitution”, see “First”.
Third, from what was posted the United States Government was given the power to to establish Post Offices but that does not provide a mandate that it must nor is it an individual right that the government is required to provide. It simply gives them the authority to do so. Continue to correct me if I’m wrong.
So please explain how that passage in the constitution either establishes postal service as a right or mandated service.
“So please explain how that passage in the constitution either establishes postal service as a right or mandated service.”
Hey, no anger here! The Constitution says the government shall establish a post office and postal roads; this from a time when very few communities were connected by roads. The Founders where trying to connect the colonies together.
Later, much later, the post office became a rent-seeking welfare project. I think it has roughly 600,000 employees now, but probably has twice that number retired. The benefits are spectacular compared with the private sector. Come this winter, unless the taxpayers swoop in and bail out the mandated retirement system, the PO stops making full retirement payments. That means that if Congress doesn’t act, then Congress is throwing away somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 million votes, plus annoying all those who still use the antiquated service.
As far as the postal service being a right or mandated service; it’s just one line in The Constitution. It could be a ceremonial office, like the Surgeon General.
Is the Post Office still needed? No. It is as obsolete as sailing ships. Will Congress swoop in and rescue it? Almost certainly. Although, I’d point out, that Bernie Schwartz of Loral, bought up dozens of companies using their retirement funds as leveraged buyout capital. He got the firms and wrote out checks for the total amounts of their retirement funds to his creditors to pay back the money he borrowed. Thousands upon thousands of retired and soon to retire workers lost an entire career’s worth of savings. I think if Bill Clinton allowed that (Bernie spent more time in the Lincoln bedroom than Mr. Lincoln did.) then we the taxpayers don’t owe the current and former postal workers any more respect than the former Loral employees got.
Section 8, after it talks about "establish post offices" goes on to say:
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Which means Congress can establish the United States Postal Service, the Private Express Statutes, and a number of other laws ~ all of which "shall be necessary and proper " to "establish post offices".
They make it an "exclusive" legislative prerogative if they wish ~ if it's in Section 8, or they can "share".
The Tenth Amendment then says:
Amendment X ~ The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
So, if a power is enumerated and delegated to the United States ~ that is, the federal government ~ then it may be construed to be prohibited by it to the States.
And so it is. Besides, you do not now nor did you ever find "the states" clamoring after the prerogative of setting up their own postal systems.
You'll find many of the arguments made by folks who want a private postal service rely on a construction of the "commerce clause" ~ yet, since this "post office" business is an enumerated power, the Tenth Amendment clearly exempts it from any arguments regarding the commerce clause ~ but interestingly enough, not to the amendment ending Prohibition. That amendment takes liquor right out of the equation when it comes to USPS. It would violate the universal edicts of the Postal Reorganization Act to make any attempt to keep up with the various state laws.
Remember, when it comes to the USPS you must always evaluate it as an agency of the federal government and not as a corporation established under a state law.
I think that should satisfy any questions you have about why Congress legislates the rules regarding "the mail".
Those who retired earlier are still fully covered under the system established by the federal government.
If you wanted to know why Olympia Snowe is considered a total idiot by virtually all Democrats and Republicans in the US Senate, this is it. She came up with this idea of having USPS pay this indemnity. The reasons are too convoluted to be believed, but this is to punish USPS for paying $78 billion too much in retirement to OPM.
It seems that if USPS gets "refunds" those funds have to be considered in rate making for postage rates. That would effectively return the overpayments to the mailers who pay postage ~ in short, it would be a windfall.
By flowing current Postal funds into this make-believe retiree medical insurance fund the mailers do not need to be given any benefit from any repayment of retirement overcharges.
It makes sense until you realize CONGRESS did not direct OPM to change the computation causing the overcharges, nor did it return the $78 billion to USPS. They simply kept it in OPM funds to use to pay off Congressional retirees and other far more highly paid top level government bureaucrats.
What needs to be done is pass a piece of legislation that relieves USPS of the retiree health plan payment AND returns the retirement overcharges to THE RETIREES for whom those overcharges were made.
‘the United States Government was given the power to to establish Post Offices but that does not provide a mandate that it must’
Precisely.
It can abandon providing postal service just as it abandoned providing post roads.
His big problem was when he gave away MIRV secrets to the Chicoms.
By all that's right and holy he should be in prison for life ~ or even worse. However, he was the single largest donor to Billzo and the Hildabeast and spent more nights in the White House than Obama's wife.
He did engage in some retirement fund shenanigans, but the specific tale you're spinning sounds more like LTV ~ where they screwed everybody including the taxpayers.
Today's manifestation is mostly financial ~ Interstate Highway system comes to mind as does AMTRAK!
Earlier we had US Highways (US 50 is an example) and CONRAIL.
Before that we had Abe Lincoln and his cronies giving away alternate sections in the Great Plains to the railroad construction and operating companies to "please build a Transcontinental Railroad for us".
TheNational Road and other "post roads" were built at federal government expense in the early days, and even CANALS received substantial federal largess (although the private and state component of the financial intrigue associated with canal building left many Midwestern states BANKRUPT).
Here's another manifestation of "post road" ~ see those postal trucks parked on the street any time of day wherever they wish? They can do that provided that is a "postal road". You don't want a "postal road"? Then you don't get mail delivery or transport on your street. That can be done as a private road or just an exclusive municipal or state road.
So, what would those be? Well, they have them at many airports ~ for example, USPS trucks do not have access to the main runways! UPS and FedEx do, but not USPS.
Those particular "roads" are reserved for specific types of vehicles (USPS doesn't own any planes) under certain conditions, but, as it turns out the whole scheme for collecting taxes and paying for construction of airport runways is done under the "post roads" clause.
The same clause probably serves to authorize subsidies for port facilities as well.
Well I can tell you that the VA is trying to rescue the post office union thugs....with one appointment the last time I got 4 different notices in the mail. Prescriptions are often mailed individually...it’s a joke. No business would ever think about conducting their business in this fashion. I have inquired about notifications via email and get blank stares...and we wonder why our country is brok?
What's going on is that the old system of using walking carriers with relay boxes simply did not meet the needs of modern mail volumes. Used to be a route might have 500 stops with each one getting 3 or 4 pieces. Then we started having routes where those 500 stops were getting several times that volume in mail.
You could build relay boxes every block or two and send guys in trucks out to fill them, or you could simply give the carriers a vehicle big enough to hold all the mail at the start of the route, and let them drive.
It's strictly economics with a bow to carrier safety. These guys are on the streets and there are crazy drivers out there.
The only political appointees are the members of the Board of Governors, the members of the Postal Rate Commission ~ no more than that.
The US Congress has legislated the conditions that make it impossible for USPS to adapt to reduced volumes of mail.
The US Congress can fix the problem.
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