USPS Chief Lays Out Plan for the Agency’s Survival

CNBC ^ | November 28,2012

[Hojczyk]

The head of the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service said the agency must be allowed to ease the terms of prepayments into a retiree health-care fund and eliminate general mail delivery on Saturday.

Patrick Donahoe told "CBS This Morning" the agency isn't asking Congress for money.

He said, "I think most people don't realize, we're 100 percent self-sufficient. We pay our own way." But the postal chief notes the agency is losing $15.9 billion this year.

Donahoe says the post office needs to refinance retirement health fund payments to $1 billion a year instead of $5 billion.

He said the Postal Service would continue package delivery on Saturday and keep post offices open. In this scenario, he says the agency could be $8 billion in the black each year.

[twister881]

USPS is being forced to fund their pension system up front with the real dollars it costs, not with the phony numbers the Federal government uses for its employees. That's Donohoe’s complaint. And between the many unions that represent postal workers & drivers and the idiots in Congress, USPS can't get unneeded facilities closed and Saturday delivery curtailed or stopped. It's a sign of the time when your (my) post office has a FedEx drop box outside the entrance. What a mess.

[BooBoo1000]

What is your mail address, You can have all of my junk mail, I will send it to you.

[muawiyah]

They have a website where you can tell them of your concern and you will never receive any direct mail advertising again in your life EVEN IF YOU WANT IT!

[editor-surveyor]

>> How about individual or group streetside mailboxes?” <<

.
Evening Rape Access Kiosks?

[editor-surveyor]

>> “They have a website where you can tell them of your concern and you will never receive any direct mail advertising again in your life EVEN IF YOU WANT IT!” <<

.
Link?

[mfreddy]

every day I walk to the end of my driveway and get my mail. Not been raped once.

Some of my neighbors pull their car up to theirs and can retrieve their mail without even getting out.

If we can’t walk to the end of our driveway to get our mail, we have a much larger problem.....

[editor-surveyor]

>> “You love direct mail advertising or you hate America ~ no two ways about it!” <<

.
You forgot the Barf Alert!

[muawiyah]

http://www.directmail.com/directory/mail_preference/Default.aspx ~ and then, you too, can join the mindless millions in the thrall of communist overlords and apparatchiks ~ they don’t like capitalist endeavor either!!!!!

[editor-surveyor]

The end of your driveway is nowhere close to group boxes that sometimes are one per block.

[RetiredTexasVet]

Donahoe says the post office needs to refinance retirement health fund payments to $1 billion a year instead of $5 billion

I would agree. When the time comes to pay for the retirement health services, 1/5th of the services should be paid for by the fund with the rest picked up by the retiree.

[muawiyah]

no idea where you got that idea. USPS fully funds the retirement system with deposits made on behalf of current employees as well as those current employee's own supplemental deposits ~ as required by law.

What the $5 billion a year tap is for is to pay medical insurance plans for employees who may be employed 75 years in the future!

It has nothing whatsoever to do with currently employed postal workers or current retirement system needs.

Olympia Snowe came up with the idea as a way to trick the public into thinking the deficit had been reduced back in 2006.

Some people were tricked.

[mfreddy]

True. My point is that even with end of driveway boxes and mail delivery vehicles, the efficiency rate would be multiplied by what, 10 or 20 times over walking carriers?

I’m surprised they gave up horses.

[muawiyah]

You really don't grasp the situation do you. This payment is for expenses USPS might be paying in the far distant future 75 years from now for private health insurance for then retired former employees.

There's not a postal employee on the planet who will ever benefit from a penny of these payments!

It's a total piece of budget trickery and BS.

[okie01]

This payment is for expenses USPS might be paying in the far distant future 75 years from now for private health insurance for then retired former employees.

Your point being, as I understand it, that there isn't a government body nor a corporation that is required to fund pension benefits in advance to the extent the USPS is.

Indeed, if advance funding of this nature was required of anybody else -- by law -- there wouldn't be any pension benefits offered.

[muawiyah]

Cluster boxes are certainly more efficient than 'at the' door boxes or slots ~ but in many cases they are not more efficient than individual curbide delivery boxes.

Depends on the location and conditions.

The problem with door delivery is that it was grandfathered in by postal rules ~ not by Congress ~ when the USPS was set up.

It can be easily disposed of with a rule change requiring curbside or cluster box service. The change is worth something this side of $100,000,000 ~ simply getting rid of unneeded rural post offices is worth more than $10,000,000,000, or 100 times as much! It also affects many fewer people.

[muawiyah]

If everybody paid their bills 75 years in advance, we'd be up a well known creek Fur Shur!!!!!

I'm so happy that Snowe woman left the Senate. She's being replaced by an idiot, but that's an improvement of sorts.

[mfreddy]

Fine, skip cluster boxes. I’d still take the efficiency of curbside. I fail to see the “hardship” in having to walk 40 feet to the end of the driveway.

I’m also in favor of eliminating unneeded rural post offices. My wife comes from a town of 218 people, less than 5 miles outside the city limits of Kansas City, MO. It has it’s own postmaster..... There is a major post office less than 10 miles in each direction.

[Gene Eric]

USPS is funded by commercial and counter sales, not through tax revenue.

[kearnyirish2]

I started paying bills online after this election to do my part to reduce the federal workforce (and maybe force postal workers to face reality); I should have done it sooner, but the stamps I have now will last for years for the few bills I will still pay via check.

Too much government work is just wealth redistribution disguised as “work”.

Ditto on the junk mail.

[wrencher]

If people ever actually find enough within them to resist the govt. the USPS is a ripe target for takedown. Just start sending things a nickel postage due. And save your junk mail and resend it to yourself, just drop it in a box.