Mr. Postman

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Here’s a one-word summary of the reason the Post Office wants to discontinue Saturday delivery of first-class mail: Congress.

“Oh come now,” you say? Consider:

  1. Congress has required that the USPS pre-fund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years, a burden no other entity, private or public, has to shoulder
  2. Last year the House never took up a bill, passed by the Senate, which would have addressed the financial problems the USPS faces as a result of #1

Since it has defaulted on two of these unreasonable pension payments in the past year, it was obvious it had to do something. As Kevin Drum suggests here, the USPS seems to have concluded it’s going to unilaterally start implementing plans to save money whether Congress likes it or not.

I don’t want to see Saturday service taken away, but I can see that unless the USPS gets out from under that ridiculous requirement that it pre-pay retiree health benefits for people it hasn’t even hired yet (75 years? Really?) it has to take some kind of major action, and reducing door-to-door service by one day a week is certainly that.

6 Comments

  1. Is it medical or I thought it was pensions?
    Are medical insurance coverage included in pensions?
    I’m trying to wrap my head around how someone could predict what medical insurance will cost 75 years from now! ha ha
    Especially if the rates keep rising like they are – chances are we’ll descend into a new Dark Age, and it’ll all be moot.

    Anyway, the whole thing is a total hose job. A HOSE JOB.

    It’s hard to imagine why anyone would do this unless they were trying to get the USPS to not offer pensions at all, or, more likely, just destroy the post office completely.

    Quite frankly I think the anti-government extremists find the post office incredibly infuriating and frustrating.

    The USPS has been completely self-supporting and successful, up until this hose job.
    Unlike MOST OTHER COUNTRIES who give support to their post offices from TAXPAYERS – not so with the USPS. The USPS does not use taxpayer money, and has never needed it!
    It’s a government success story!

    It’s a thorn in the side of people who favour privatization of everything.

    And it likely bugs a lot of those types, that the private companies not only couldn’t compete completely, but didn’t even want to compete with what a lot of what the post office does.

    It looks like an attempt to sabotage the post office.

    If it’s not, then require Fedex, UPS, and U-haul to provide pensions to their employees, and fund them for the next 75 years. I wonder how long those guys would stay in business with that situation… probably about 8 days.

    What’s even more interesting to me is this… I used to work at a job where I had to ship a lot of stuff of varying sizes & weights, and decide how to ship things. Of course, just like I would personally, I comparison shopped… When it came to small packages & lightweight items, the USPS won out with the best price, hands down, every time.

    I think a lot of businesses lose money because they don’t realize this, and don’t bother to comparison shop, and go with the USPS when the price is right.

  2. The thing is, neither Fedex nor UPS have any interest in delivering to the rural areas which would be hurt worst by privatization. Oddly enough, those rural areas also primarily vote Republican. You’d think they’d be squawking to their Reps.

  3. Yes you’re right!
    USPS delivers to all sorts of outlying and remote areas of the U.S. that simply would never be profitable to service by commercial business!
    You would think that BUSINESSES who send bills to those places would be concerned! I suppose those businesses just intend to pass the costs of delivering bills to those people by raising their prices for everyone!

    Everybody loses if the postal service loses. Either directly or indirectly. There’s simply no logical reason to want to strangle it like this.

    Oh, and I was watching NHK Newsline last night – and they reported on this, without ever mentioning the problem was caused by Congress & that stupid law!!
    I was so irritated! You’d think Japanese reporters would know better!!!
    They were blaming the financial trouble of the U.S.P.S. on the rise of internet bill payments, etc. – in whole as the explanation!
    (I sent them a complaint of error via the NHK World web site. Worth a try!)

  5. Someone commented on Beat the Press blog that NPR failed to even mention the pension obligations. The commenter said they sent an email to the ombudsman. I sent one too after checking out the story.

    It’s all I can think to do. To just keep sending the message that I know they know they’re not doing their jobs.

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