Posted on 09/07/2011 3:53:24 AM PDT by tobyhill
The Obama administration said on Tuesday that it would seek to save the deficit-plagued Postal Service from an embarrassing default by proposing to give it an extra three months to make a $5.5 billion payment due on Sept. 30 to finance retirees’ future health coverage.
Speaking at a Senate hearing, John Berry, director of the federal Office of Personnel Management, also said the administration would soon put forward a plan to stabilize the postal service, which faces a deficit of nearly $10 billion this fiscal year and had warned that it could run out of money entirely this winter.
“We must act quickly to prevent a Postal Service collapse,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which held the Tuesday hearing on the Postal Service’s financial crisis.
Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe testified that even with a three-month reprieve on the $5.5 billion payment, the post office was likely to run out of cash and face a shutdown next July or August unless Congress passed legislation that provided a long-term solution for the ailing agency.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Obama administration said on Tuesday that it would seek to save the deficit-plagued Postal Service from an embarrassing default by proposing to give it an extra three months to make a $5.5 billion payment due on Sept. 30 to finance retirees’ future health coverage.
The postal service would be making a profit if it weren’t for the retirees benefits.
Three months won’t help a thing. It just prolongs their suffering.
It should have been privatized years ago.
I do 100% of all my financial transactions online. The only thing USPS delivers to Mrs. FD and I are Netflix (which I cancelled), junk mail and magazines. They could stop Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday delivery with no adverse affect on us.
Close the whole thing down.
"Has the USPS ever considered an ad campaign to convince Ameicans on the importance, the value, of writing letters?"
Possibly the stupidest thing she's ever sdaid?
“We must act quickly to prevent a Postal Service collapse,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman, independent of Connecticut,
WHY?
It does not work
We are broke.
STOP! No More.................
Perhaps Zero needs to call Scott Walker for advice.
“Noting that some great books have been written based on letters sent by the Founding Fathers and by soldiers, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, urged the postmaster general to run an advertising campaign urging Americans to send more letters to each other.
“There is something special about receiving a piece of first-class mail, knowing that it comes from someone you care about,” she said. “I really believe that if someone would begin to market the value of sending a written letter to someone you love, you might be surprised what it will do for your Christmas season.”
Any way we can make it independent enough to send it through bankruptcy?
“An overarching trend that has fueled the Postal Service’s crisis — and reduced annual mail volume by 22 percent since 2006 — is that Americans are e-mailing, paying bills electronically and reading shopping catalogs and news online.”
Thank you, kind sir (or madam)....for the superb, and very rapid..research ...
Kill the beast. Privatize it.
Would a constitutional amendment be required to do so?
It’s “sir”. Or rather “Major”, considering the nom de plume I’ve chosen.
No. Congress has the power “To establish Post Offices and post Roads.” There is no constitutional mandate that overpaid government union employees deliver the mail.
>>”Noting that some great books have been written based on letters sent by the Founding Fathers and by soldiers, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, urged the postmaster general to run an advertising campaign urging Americans to send more letters to each other.<<
The Founding Fathers found email to be far too impersonal and didn’t trust online banking.
Ye Gods but this is easy: terminate the Postal unions.
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