APWU Web News Article 068-2013, May 28, 2013
When Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told Congress last week of plans to take money from two federal employee retirement funds to avoid defaulting on the national debt, there was hardly a peep. No outrage. No dismay. Not even a question.
APWU President Cliff Guffey wants to know why not.
Guffey is ticked off because the federal government is taking a chunk of money that properly belongs to the Postal Service – while the USPS teeters on the edge of bankruptcy.
“Postal customers and employees have overpaid $3 billion into the Federal Employees Retirement System, but Congress has refused to return the surplus – even while the USPS is forced to shutter thousands of post offices, close hundreds of mail sorting facilities, lower service standards, and delay mail delivery,” he said.
“The government is helping itself to money that was paid by postal customers and employees, not taxpayers,” Guffey pointed out.
“The federal government won’t let the Postal Service touch that money, but they’re taking it themselves,” the union president said. “How brazen can they be?”
“The government has borrowed before from federal employee pension accounts and repaid the money,” Guffey noted. “We fully expect it to be repaid this time as well. But that’s not the point.”
In addition to the federal pension funds, the Treasury is tapping the controversial Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund. “The one that’s bankrupting the USPS,” Guffey said.
“The fund has more than $46 billion in it that the government won’t let the Postal Service use, even though the agency is on the verge of a financial collapse,” he said, “but they’re helping themselves to it.”
Congress created the fund in 2006 when it passed the PAEA, which forces the Postal Service to pre-fund a 75-year liability in a 10-year period. The payments, which are approximately $5 billion annually, account for approximately 70 percent of the Postal Service’s current net deficit for the period from 2007 to 2012.
“Congress insists the USPS must pre-fund. They say the money must be there, but they don’t object when the government grabs it,” Guffey said.
Right on mailhandler done…right on the money!
Really lou…so it matters not that there were two democrat cosponsors and virtually all the democrats voted for it? Thanks for revealing how naïve, shallow and ignorant you are. What I see is a sitting president who got the APWU vote and has done absolutely nothing but further erode our(USPS) ability to function to the detriment of the very people who voted for him.
Obama makes Bush look like a piker when it comes to murder…more soldiers have died on O’s watch than Bush’s, where’s your tears for them you politicized nincompoop!
seriously all u have to do is see who was the sitting prez was when this law was signed in , you got it , the thieving murdering BUSH
Too few people understand the amount of outright theft of common property occurring. Common property meaning that property held and preserved and maintained for the common use of the citizen.
Our nation is being sold short for we do not dream large now. We are a great nation capable of unbelievable feats but we led by those who listen to those who state that our time is past, that the future is grim.
The powerful elite have found their protection in the control of the common media, the gutting of investigative reporting, establishment of preponderantly shill talking point radio networks, the well placed donations to politicians, civic organizations deprived of funding, the turning of the question of responsibility from perpetuator and gainer to the choices of the victim (a victim unaware perhaps of the small one line tax code changes that only benefitted a strangely small group who just happened to profit in amounts obscene to behold and to be reimbursed for the outlays of monies distributed for influence).
We are citizens of a republic, not serfs of a monarchy. Tis time for us and the elite who benefit by the stability that this
construct of political system provides, to remember this fact. If the citizen is not allowed to be safe in his own house and in the common interchange of social and economic pursuits, the property of the elite shall too not be safe.
We are in a social compact.
rick evans…only in the minds of the weak minded
Obama rules, you bunch of suckers
Yup I too am an ET…or am saved grade since our plant was shut down and am on standby time..being a VETERAN also helps but it seems there is little respect compared to what it used to be..I do believe that we should not be so concerned with dems and demlites since a fox doesn’t need to state his political affiliation before he raids the chicken coop.I agree with ET on the possible crash and I also see the reason the vultures are feasting on our money( because it is there and seems to be easy pickins since no one seems to notice or care that they help themselves) I notice and care and if the APWU doesn’t
go “all in” to protect the members money, retirement seems to be further away than it should. I do have over thirty years in and would like to see my retirement years enjoyable, not struggling with food stamps–oh wait the government wants to do away with them also.
I have lost much hope the public is aware of the plight of the USPS
or even cares, we have E-mail and the internet and tweeting twerps-so everything must be good for them. Is the union getting the word out to
the public sector about what is happening?
LarryP…sounds like a cop out to me because you were either unwilling to do the research yourself or just plain lazy. Tell me, when you were looking up who was getting contributions from UPS did you see any Democrats on that list? “The lesser of two evils”…REALLY…after what you have witnessed from this administration you can say that with a straight face?
The Democrats were “all in” on the PAEA and if anyone tells you different they are lying to you. I hear republicans getting accused of a lot of stuff but never have seen any of it materialize. Do some of your own research next time when the union says anything about what republicans may or may not do, you will see that it is nothing but a bunch of distortions, half truths and flat out lies because they know as part of their political calculus that there are people like you who will swallow hook, line and sinker their nonsense. Your job was under no threat from a Romney presidency, no more so than the inaction of this president the first two years of his first term when he could have halted the PAEA with a stroke of a pen, but yet did nothing, and the union said nothing. When did wanting a small government become a bad thing? It is what our country was founded on.
You may not believe this “chicken little” but you are closer now to losing your job than you can possibly imagine. Our fate(USPS) is tied to a strong economy, and I am not talking about that phony number that the DOW is at either. When the government prints money the way this administration has that money stays in the financial services market and does not trickle down to the consumer. The bankers and those businesses that operate in that segment of the economy are the only ones getting rich(..Obama’s biggest backers…look that up why don’t you?) while we consumers pay more for gas, groceries and everything else with no prospect for a significant pay raise to offset these cost. Do you even see the disconnect from what you are paying out vs. what the DOW is doing? If you are in the C-Fund you are doing very well, but then the FED knows that and is helping themselves to your money, but when it comes crashing down…and it will at some point because what Obama and his policies are doing is creating another bubble in the financial markets, it will not be pretty…remember, wealth is not made…it is transferred!
Is it any wonder that the government has resorted to taking our retirement money? The printing press must be almost out of ink by now. The shortfall in the spending they want to avoid includes weapons to the Syrian rebels, the Muslim Brotherhood, improvements to the Palestinian territories, cash and guns to the Mexican drug cartels and propping up their crony capitalist “green energy” companies. The USPS’s needs are insignificant compared to this.
The dems are doing the same thing to the country as they do in their personal lives, bankrupting the country.
Problem is they got no one to foot the bill, oh wait yes they do…the working people of this country….Redistribution from the working to the non-working…
When the balance tips, as it has, to more people not working than those that do…with those that don’t voting for people to give handouts, eventually there will be no one working, and no goods or services for anyone…COMPLETE KAOS AND THE COLAPSE OF THE USA…
ET…. Its a matter of the lesser between two evils. The Republican party included it there platform, contracting out to private companies, the postal service. They also have people like Issa, a big recipient of UPS contributions, heading postal commissions. The Dems are bad, but Republicans are SCARY BAD. I need my job, so I voted Democrat.
Secretary Jacob, go home!
Buy more lottery tickets and become a millionaire, your problem is solved.
That money is gone that’s why you won’t hear a peep from them about it …..guilty but they won’t tell you that.
Dude Congress and the government spent it and the unions helped them in the process. Its all about the money not the workers who make the money for the p.o.
Between the recession, Congress’s stagnation, gov’t shenanigans and corporate greed mob tactics..i smell a revolution coming on.
laguna man…but yet when election time rolls around these same dipshits that are whining about this now will dutifully report to the democrat plantation and vote according to what the highly politicized union leadership(…aka Democrat Party shills) recommends.
If we all know politicians(D’s or R’s) to be liars…and they are…why would anyone believe anything they say in a campaign speech? Lest of all some moronic slogans like “Hope and Change” or “Yes We Can” or “Forward”(..which by the way goes all the way back to Stalin’s campaigns)by a devout communist.
After 28 years of membership in the APWU I am now a “scab” and will be the remaining two years of my career. First time around endorsing this clown was wrong but forgivable but a second time is not!
The federal government is the biggest mafia
outfit that ever existed.It has been ripping off
the Americam people and workers for so long.
Obama behaves just like Nixon,Bush Sr.
and Junior.He is another Wall Street puppet.
The always are”stealing” from these retire
ment funds.But,they never collect taxes from
Corporate America.What a pitiful phonies they are.
When you have a Supreme Court that grind their heels on Part Time Flexies like our’s did back in the day , why do you expect a peep from us old cigarette butts ?
I know the government has taken from the pension funds before, and have paid it back. However, this time around, I’m not comfortable because it appears the gov’t is not paying anyone back, this recession has went on to long, don’t believe the stories that we are out of the woods yet. Corporate America is not ready to get out of our pockets just yet, probably never will.
BUSH’S FAULT!!!
Off with their heads!!!
take it all just like they did to s.s. then cry about it when its time to pay it back they like to say oh its another tax hike on the so called job creators what a bunch of b.s.
Raise my taxes, please! I don’t want to keep what I earn, take it all!!!!!!!
So my union dues were wasted on Obama and the dems. Obama using the money to fatten up the pockets of his banking buddies and wall street.