The Postal Service, on the verge of its first default on Wednesday, faces a cash shortage of $100 million this October stemming from declining mail volume that could balloon to $1.2 billion next year, “ declared theNew York Times. “Confronting $11.1 billion in payments over the next two months for future benefits, the service said it would fail to pay about half that amount, which is due Wednesday, and does not foresee making the other half, which is due in September. An additional $5.6 billion payment due next year is also in question.”The ‘default’ is not primarily the result of a bad market or even bad operations, but of bad legislating by Congress,” explains National Association of Letter Carriers president Fredric Rolando.In 2006, a Republican Congress—acting at the behest of the Bush-Cheney administration—enacted a law that required the postal service to “pre-fund” retiree health benefits 75 years into the future. No major private-sector corporation or public-sector agency could do that. It’s an untenable demand. “(The) Postal Service in the short term should be released from an onerous and unprecedented burden to pre-fund 75 years of future retiree health benefits over a 10-year period,” says US Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont. “With $44 billion now in the fund, the Postal Service inspector general has said that program is already stronger than any other equivalent government or private-sector fund in the country. There already is more than enough in the account to meet all obligations to retirees.”“The Postal Service should also be allowed to recover more than $13 billion in overpayments it has made to its pension plans,” adds Sanders. “With these changes alone, the Postal Service would be back in the black and posting profits
by republican design, their plan, privatization of your postal service. which in no way affects the gov't, makes it red meat for the right, profit,profit, profit.
that friendly postperson, gone a sneering bloodsucker with they're hand stuck out for you to get your mail. stamps,envelopes, boxes you'd do better to cut down a tree and make your own and deliver your own mail in person.
Sanders and other concerned legislators have gotten the Senate to take some steps toward addressing what is, in reality, a Congressional crisis—not a postal crisis. But the disengaged and dysfunctional Republican leadership in the House has failed to act in an even minimally responsible manner.
The Post Office will need to make changes. It will need to evolve as the ways in which Americans communicate change. But it can and should remain the vital source of community and connection that it has been since the nation’s founding. For that to happen, however, the USPS must be allowed by maintain staffing and infrastructure, to expand services, to operate in a fiscally responsible and fiscally sane manner—not required to default.
once again, it's up to us to put the correct people in office to attain that goal, not one of right wing privatizing.
