From the Treasury Department:
Washington – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today released the Task Force report on the United States Postal System. The report, United States Postal System: A Sustainable Path Forward, provides a series of recommendations to overhaul the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) business model in order to return it to sustainability without shifting additional costs to taxpayers.
“The USPS is on an unsustainable financial path which poses significant financial risk to American taxpayers,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. “President Trump tasked us with conducting a thorough evaluation of the USPS, and today’s report contains achievable recommendations that fulfill the President’s goal of placing the USPS on a path to sustainability, while protecting taxpayers from undue financial burdens and providing them with necessary mail services.”
Between fiscal year (FY) 2007 and FY 2018, the USPS experienced net losses totaling $69 billion. The USPS is forecast to lose tens of billions of dollars over the next decade. The USPS’s business model—including its governance, product pricing, cost allocation, and labor practices—must be updated in light of its current operating realities.
On April 12, 2018, President Trump issued the Executive Order on the Task Force on the United States Postal System. The Executive Order established a Task Force on the United States Postal System, chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury and including the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management. The Task Force was directed to evaluate the operations and finances of the USPS and to develop recommendations for administrative and legislative reforms that will enable the USPS to create a sustainable business model.
The Task Force’s recommendations include, but are not limited to:
- Improving governance by strengthening the Board of Governors and developing enforcement mechanisms to ensure financial commitments and reforms are met;
- Clearly defining the Universal Service Obligation by specifying what are “essential postal services,” or types of mail and packages for which a strong social or macroeconomic rationale exists for government protection;
- Developing a new pricing model that removes price caps and charges market-based prices for both mail and package items that are not deemed “essential postal services”;
- Modernizing the USPS’s cost standards and cost allocation methodology;
- Pursuing cost-cutting strategies that will enable it to meet the changing realities of its business model;
- Reforming USPS employee compensation in a manner consistent with proposed reforms to the broader federal workforce;
- Restructuring retiree health benefit liabilities with a new actuarial calculation that is based on employees at or near retirement age;
- Exploring new services that will allow the USPS to exact value from its existing assets and business lines, but that present no balance sheet risk.
The Task Force’s full analysis and complete list of recommendations can be found in the full report.
View the Task Force report on the United States Postal System.
I’m going to ride this Gravy Train to the end!!!…. we’re doomed….160 billion dollars in the hole and counting.
I’m being forced to work Christmas day….the USPS is the only entity on the planet who would pay me $600 for one day of shuffling mail….but it’s not their money…the US Treasury is footing the bill.
The just passed Farm Bill includes SUBSIDIES for farmers. I thought Das Fuhrer hated giving any subsidies? He always rants about never give subsidies to the Postal service. If the farmers receive subsidies, they must pre pay their health care costs in advance just as the Postal service must!
This sounds like the propaganda that comes from CFO Joseph Corbett from the spa at Elephant Plaza.
The world needs farmers…the world doesn’t need the postal service anymore with the Internet, UPS, FedEx and Amazon taking over.
That’s why farmers get subsidies and the postal service is being restructured and phased out.
Sounds like the Task Force wants the presort companies to finish the job and take over all letter mail processing operations….that would result in a second round of plant closures and the need to layoff employees. The remaining plants would just be processing parcels and periodicals.
Taking away the collective bargaining power of employees would result in wage and benefit decreases and the end of the no lay-off clause. Employees would be at the mercy of whatever the USPS feel like paying them and what their benefit package entails. That would result in a mass exodus of the higher-tiered salary employees, which is exactly what the Task Force wants….it would also save the USPS from having to layoff employees once the plant closures take place.
The USPS would be a shell of its former self if this transpires, but a taxpayer bailout would be averted….but can they find enough competent employees to work nights and weekends for reduced wages and benefits. Obviously, the Task Force believes they can.
So the report pushed by Dos Fuhrer still insists that tax payers shouldn’t “subsidize” Postal operations, or “subsidize” postal employee’s health care costs! How come tax payers must subsidize the cost of flood insurance for people that live in areas that have storm damage? How come tax payers must pay for subsidizes for soy farmers? Why be forced to pay taxes for farm price subsidizes? Now that schools are expected to contain weapon arsenals for school security why are tax payers expected to pay for the security? Shouldn’t the gun huggers pay for the security needs? And as for Postal employees being over paid, in America everyone that works a physical job is expected to work for free! The very thought that unions stand up for working people is more that the Ratpublicans can stand. They would like things to go back to the 1880’s. In Chicago most workers worked ten hour days six days a week foe $1.50 for men. Women were luckier, they were paid$.75 cents for their ten hour day! As the costs of goods increases, workers are expected to be paid less. The rich just want to hoard and cuddle their money! And people that work are expected to be paid just enough to stay healthy so they can work for nothing.
Right ON retired and glad —
But as the USPS goes, so do us retirees —