It's that simple.

The Postal Service has been required to put away $ for future employees that haven't been born yet. Must cover 75 years with 10 years to do it. Free up that $ and the Post Office is making a SURPLUS again.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr6407

The post office has not paid its pension payment for two years now. It skipped the 5.5 billion payment in 2011 and 2012. It still lost money in operations. It lost 9.1 billion last year not including the pension payment it did not pay. It loses $25 million every day in operations.

http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Post-office-will-miss-5-5-billion-pension-payment-3750170.php

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-morris/usps-budget_b_1545430.html

David Morris

Co-founder, Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Posted: 05/25/2012 7:01 pm

This is just the end of the article.


The level of the annual payments was not based on any actuarial determination. The numbers were produced by CBO as the amounts necessary to offset the loss of the escrow payments.

Remember, this all began because the post office discovered it had surplus funds. Unified budget accounting made sure it could never tap into this surplus unless at the same time it assumed new liabilities of an equal magnitude.

The solution to the post office financial deficit is simple. Give it back the money, Congress, as a result of pressure from the CBO, has stolen from it over the past years. Then make future payments into the health fund for retirees actuarially based.

Once this artificially generated financial noose is removed from the postal service's neck we can get on with helping it navigate the shoals of an uncertain future. To do this the postal service must build on its two most important assets: its ubiquitous physical infrastructure and the high esteem in which Americans hold it. In combination, these assets offer the post office an enviable platform upon which to many new revenue-producing services.

But to do this Congress will have to remove another burden imposed by the 2006 law: a prohibition on the postal service offering non-postal services. Like issuing licenses (e.g. drivers, hunting, fishing, etc.) or contracting with local and state agencies to provide services. Congress should also lift the prohibition on the post office shipping wine and beer.

In offering new services the USPS could learn from post offices in other countries. The French post office offers banking and insurance services. Remember that from 1911 to 1967 the U.S. Post Office successfully and profitably ran a nationwide postal savings bank. The Swedish post office will physically deliver email correspondence to people who are not online.

But before any of this will happen we need to 'fess up. The postal crisis is contrived. Let's stop scaring ourselves silly with make believe deficit monsters and unshackle this national asset.

has refused to pay the pre-funding requirement to make their financial problems more evident to the rest of the US. They have paid 7.5 years ahead for every year that the made the payments. That means that they are 30+ years ahead already.

They are not trying to show anybody anything. They did not pay because they did not have the funds to do it. As the article pointed out in my post they are losing money every day in operations. The pension pre-funding is not part of that.

The USPS would have made nearly a billion dollars last year. they are only losing money because of the pre-funding obligations.

As I pointed out they DID NOT PAY the pre-funding requirement last year or the year before. Yet they still lost money. They lost 25 million every day or 9.1 billion for the year. Pre-funding has nothing to do with this. http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Post-office-will-miss-5-5-billion-pension-payment-3750170.php

I guess so.

But the reality is that they will stop delivering on Saturday (illegal? Hardly), and save millions of dollars, thousands of jobs and remain viable.

Then Matt will have to find something else to complain about...apparently Walmart hasn't done anything he disagrees with this week.

Losing saturday delivery will cost the USPS thousands of jobs. It is also the first step to allowing the USPS to deliver 3 days a week and UPS or Fedex to deliver the other days. The plan is to privatize the post office. Do you think after they gut the post office for private capitol that people in Rural America will still see a letter carrier or postage that is less than $5???

I'm all for unions and would love to see the USPS fully funded, comfortable, and doing what they've done since we became a nation. It is my favorite government (quasi) agency and we'd be a much poorer nation without it.

But - Matt isn't making sense.

The poll didn't ask "yes or no". The poll asked how strongly people supported or opposed five-day delivery.
It's not a trick question - a trick question would be the either/or that backs people into a corner.

He says that if people were asked to answer a "yes or no" question that they would answer yes. So why is he trying to say that the USPS is lying when they say that 80% support five-day delivery? It is a more nuanced support - more details than just a flat yes or no - but the poll does suggest that 80% DO support it, either very much or not as completely.

Logic says - and Matt agrees - that if the question were reduced to an either/or, that the people who support the idea would say "yes".

I am confused by his comments.

Yes you are right, I am showing how they take people who somewhat support the idea and make them Firm Believers. I was trying to show that people do not as strongly support 5 day delivery as the USPS is telling everyone.

That's fair - but you might want to edit your article because your point is unclear.

I don't disagree that nuanced polls are often used to present an aggregate - lumping the "sort of support" with the "really support" in a disingenuous way. It's like giving people the option of yes/maybe/maybe not/no and then claiming that all the maybe's are really yes.