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No rational company would choose to make pre‐funding future retiree health benefits the highest corporate priority in today’s economy – and no company would use all its borrowing capacity to do so. But that is precisely what the Postal Service has been forced to do. As a result, it will soon exhaust its $15 billion borrowing authority ‐‐ a line of credit established in 1970 to permit the USPS to invest in its retail and mail processing networks and to keep its huge vehicle fleet up to date. • In 2005, the Postal Service did not even have to use its borrowing authority. It had no outstanding debt; today it has $13.2 billion in debt. Virtually all this debt has been used to finance the pre‐funding of retiree health benefits ‐‐ not to restructure the Postal Service’s network of facilities, or to replace its old vehicle fleet, or to invest in new products and services to meet the emerging needs of the nation’s economy. • Only about a third of all the Fortune 1000 list of the largest American companies voluntarily pre‐fund retiree health benefits, according to annual survey conducted by Towers Watson, a leading accounting and actuarial services company. Of those that do, the median level of pre‐funding (31% of future costs) is far below that of the Postal Service (48%). • No other federal agency in any of the three branches of government is required to pre‐fund future retiree health benefits. Congress mandated prefunding for the USPS, but it does not pre‐fund and none of its special agencies ‐‐ the General Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office or the Library of Congress – do either.