The U.S. Postal Service is one of our most popular and important government agencies. It provides universal service six days a week to every corner of America, no matter how small or remote. It supports millions of jobs in virtually every other sector of our economy. It provides decent-paying union jobs to some 500,000 Americans, and it is the largest employer of veterans.
Whether you are a low-income elderly woman living at the end of a dirt road in Vermont or a wealthy CEO living on Park Avenue, you get your mail six days a week. And you pay for this service at a cost far less than anywhere else in the industrialized world.
Yet the Postal Service is under constant and vicious attack. Why? The answer is simple. There are very powerful and wealthy special interests who want to privatize or dismember virtually every function that government now performs, whether it is Social Security, Medicare, public education or the Postal Service. They see an opportunity for Wall Street and corporate America to make billions in profits out of these services, and couldn’t care less how privatization or a degradation of services affects ordinary Americans.
For years, antigovernment forces have been telling us that there is a financial crisis at the Postal Service and that it is going broke. That is not true. The crisis is manufactured.
At the insistence of the Bush administration, Congress in 2006 passed legislation that required the Postal Service to prefund, over a 10-year period, 75 years of future retiree health benefits. This onerous and unprecedented burden—$5.5 billion a year—is responsible for all of the financial losses posted by the Postal Service since October 2012.
Without prefunding, the Postal Service would have made a $623 million profit last year. Excluding the prefunding mandate, the Postal Service estimates it will make more than $1 billion in profits this year. This is not surprising, since the Postal Service made a combined profit of $9 billion from 2003-06, before the prefunding mandate took effect.
The mandate allows the antigovernment crowd to proclaim that the Postal Service “is going bankrupt.” Their solution is to slash hundreds of thousands of jobs, close thousands of post offices, eliminate hundreds of mail processing plants, end Saturday mail, and substantially slow down mail delivery.
In the House, Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) passed a bill through his committee that would do all of these things. The bill would drive more customers to seek other options and will lead to a death spiral—lower-quality service, fewer customers, more cuts, less revenue and eventually the destruction of the Postal Service.
In the Senate, Sens. Tom Carper (D., Del.) and Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) also passed a postal reform bill through the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. While not as destructive as the House proposal, the Carper-Coburn bill could lead to the loss of about 100,000 jobs, allow the Postal Service to eliminate six-day mail delivery, substantially slow down the delivery of mail, and lead to the loss of more mail processing plants and post offices within the next few years.
There are much better ideas that would strengthen, not destroy the Postal Service, and they are in the Postal Service Protection Act that has been introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.) in the House and by me in the Senate. The House bill has 174 co-sponsors. The Senate bill has 27 co-sponsors.
First, prefunding must end. The future retiree health fund now has some $50 billion in it. That is enough. This step alone will restore the Postal Service to profitability.
Second, the Postal Service should have the flexibility to provide new consumer products and services—a flexibility that was banned by Congress in 2006. It is now against the law for workers in post offices to notarize or make copies of documents; to cash checks; to deliver wine or beer; or to engage in e-commerce activities (like scanning physical mail into a PDF and sending it through e-mail, selling non-postal products on the Internet or offering a non-commercial version of Gmail).
A recent report from the Postal Service Inspector General suggests that almost $9 billion a year could be generated by providing financial services. At a time when more than 80 million lower-income Americans have no bank accounts or are forced to rely on rip-off check-cashing storefronts and payday lenders, these kinds of financial services would be of huge social benefit.
It is time for Congress to save the Postal Service, not dismantle it.
Mr. Sanders is an independent senator from Vermont.
Lets cut saturday delivery so we can save millions and then hire more stupivisors and non essential headquarters personnel who make $90,000 a year and come up with these brilliant programs such as dois and others.Before you know it carriers will be scanning every tree on there route.Oh yeah can’t wait till we get a holiday we will have 7 days worth of mail to deliver in 4. Cant wait
Someone has not been paying attention. The Postal Service has not been propped up for the sake of providing jobs.
It’s the opposite: It has been undermined by the onerous payments required of it by Congress. Its employment numbers have been reduced.
Along with the monopoly status -of letter mail, not packages- the Postal Service’s “special requirement” is universal delivery at a price determined not by the market, but by statutory requirements. They will deliver from Florida to Miami or across the street in NYC for the same price. Something no private company is required to do.
USPS does not need propping up. It needs reasonable operating requirements, specifically in retirement health benefit prefunding requirements. Leave it to Congress to break the most efficient Postal Service in the world, the one government agency that actually works, providing service at no cost to the taxpayer.
I feel like a complete idiot cause I just wasted 5 min of my 10 min break, in between loops to read all these dumb posts !!! I need to get back to my rounds. 5 day delivery. !!!!!!!
LAST WORDS ON THIS SUBJECT: The financial problems facing the postal service were seen coming long before the 2006 Postal Reform Act and that was a part of the motivation to fund the retirement health care while it was possible to. Even the old postmaster John Potter saw this coming. As far as no private sector company having this burden, well keep in mind that no private company has been given a monopoly by law like the postal service and along with that special right comes additional requirements. Face it the postal service can not and should not be propped up for the sake of providing jobs. Useful and efficient service, emphasis on useful.
By the by, where do you think that 50 billion dollar retire health care fund is right now? Guarantee it’s funding some politicians pet project that is probably even less relevant and productive than the USPS! Probably used to fund military deployment extentions in some resentful desert village in B.F.E!
In 2006 when the law was passed, USPS was at the peak of its earnings, a record high. I suspect Congress smelled “extra” money, and figured it could use that surplus for some creative accounting, dip into it in a way to make the federal budget balancing act look better.
Bernie Sanders is an Independent, and a champion of the working man. Unlike some of his colleagues, he still has some principles. If that’s a “moron in the pocket of the unions”, I’ll take him over a job- killing privatization moron any day of the week, including Saturdays. Knee-jerk anti-union working men are shooting themselves in the foot.
While it may be true First Class Mail is in decline, the infrastructure of the USPS is huge, and there certainly has to be an unmatched advantage in that. Sadly, the only apparent solution is to eviscerate and destroy that advantage, a testament to creative solutions. Yeah, that’s it… make the service worse! That’ll bring the public flocking to it in droves.
They won’t end Saturday delivery cause they wouldn’t want to hurt their -$$$ pockets either simple as that not good for business and they know that too.
What retired does not say, parcel delivery is better than ever for the PO. Add to that the (extra mile parcels by the hundreds and thousands at Christmas we deliver for UPS and FedEx) its out of sight. We are making money and have been. What the Senator said is right on. Why do you think UPS and FedEX, plus others want to destroy the PO and take the money from the profitable routes. What I’ve seen from you four is disgusting and shows you are not keeping up with what is really going on at the PO. The PMG looks to be doing exactly what Rep.ISSA and his cohorts want. Does make some of us wonder where his next job will be and for who. Would be a nice reward for dismantling the PO under the guise of helping it. The Senator is also correct in saying the PO has been making a profit during the economic downturn. Maybe not the billions of the years before,but still a profit and we have seen an increase as each year passes. This paying for unhired future employees would not be tolerated by any private business, ask Apple, Microsoft, BP, IBM, Etc. NO one else in the world pays for people not on the books. Only an entity, that a misguided government is trying to destroy would be forced into it. Sounds like a congressional dictatorship run by outside interests i.e. lobbyists. Also for retired, you had best be concerned for your future. The PMG wants to mess with your health insurance, and there is not many on either side of the aisle willing to say no. You may not like what is coming, if or when it is passed.
Amazing. THE FACTS IN THE STORY SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. Can anyone tell us any company public or private or any other gov’t agency required to pay 5.5 billion dollars prefund charge.Stop the political BS and let the one Government service that reaches and helps every community in the country 6 days a week continue at the bargain Tax free rate it truly is!!!
As for first comment not really sure what their political party BS has to do with story. The second comment uses moron in their first sentence, after reading their comment MORON does come to mind. The third comment shows their ignorance of the services the USPS offers and only highlights their lack of knowledge in the increasing use of those services(USPS delivers more than just letters…Parcel volume, BBM and periodical mailings all up despite a bad economy). I wish I had the laser eyes of comment four knowing the magazines in the carriers arm are all BBM and the satchel on his back is empty. Amazing. THE FACTS IN THE STORY SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. Can anyone tell us any company public or private or any other gov’t agency required to pay 5.5 billion dollars prefund charge.Stop the political BS and let the one Government service that reaches and helps every community in the country 6 days a week continue at the bargain Tax free rate it truly is!!!
and where’s the dps. Why is he walking in the street when it looks like more snow on the side of the road than on the sidewalk.
Corporate fascists are worse than the in-bred British king the Founding Fathers had to deal with. And the citizenry are burned out trying to survive under the new rules. What happened to the benefits of automation /computers? The .01% will take all the benefits and hope there is no moder guillotine? Keep pushing us clowns…
P.S.
I just wanted to add this; I noticed that the letter carrier in the photo attached with this article is sorting BBM magazines to deliver, not first class mail.
The Senator speaks with a lot of passion, but she must realize that the majority of well paying jobs within the postal service are classified as unskilled clerk positions, by the postal service itself. Seeking to expand the services offered by the postal service merely supports the obvious that First Class mail will continue to decline as will the need for the postal service to deliver it.
I believe that government agencies are positioned to offer many services at rates less than the private sector because of their special nature. But that is not called competition, its called something else. I believe all of us must continue to work on improving our skills and knowledge and try to keep up with the new technologies. The Postal Service may be reaching the end of its useful and efficient service. If this is the case let it go out class, not like an old prize fighter that stayed to long and became the but of a joke.
What a moron in the pocket of the Unions.
Six day delivery is not necessary, and is wasteful of a commodity that is expensive and in short supply.(OIL)
Burning all that fuel maintains the US dependence on foreign oil and contributes to global warming and pollution.
Streamlining the USPS will insure that a cost efficient delivery system will continue into the future and restrain unnecessary inflation as it protects good middle class jobs. (Not just over bloated Union jobs)
Good Job Liberals And Unions
Barack Obama voted for the PAEA (Postal Reform Act) of 2006. So did Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and John Kerry. In, fact, it passed the Senate with 100% consent, not a single senator objected to the language in the bill. And the co sponsors of the bill in the house were two Democrats, Danny Davis and Henry Waxman. – Both the NALC and NPMHU endorsed the bill.