GOP Going Postal

If Darryl Issa and the Republican Party have their way, the USPS will not survive.   They are doing and have done everything in their power to make that happen, so that companies like UPS and FedEx can take over the business.  If that happens, we all lose.

After a stopgap measure last year, Congress will once again debate whether the United States Postal Service as we know it can survive.  The better question is: Will Congress let it?

The U.S. Postal Service is at risk of defaulting on healthcare obligations or exceeding its debt limit by the end of the year. Last month, USPS management unveiled a “Path to Profitability” that would eliminate over a hundred thousand jobs, end Saturday service and loosen overnight delivery guarantees. The Postal Service also proposes to shutter thousands of post offices.  “Under the existing laws, the overall financial situation for the Postal Service is poor,” says CFO Joe Corbett.  Republicans have been more dire, and none more so than Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who warned of a “crisis that is bringing USPS to the brink of collapse.”

Listening to Issa, you’d never know that the post office’s immediate crisis is largely of Congress’s own making.  Conservatives aren’t wrong to say that the shift toward electronic mail – what USPS calls “e-diversion” – poses a challenge for the Postal Service’s business model.  (The recent drop-off in mail is also a consequence of the recession-induced drop in advertising.)

But even so, in the first quarter of this fiscal year, the post office would have made an operational profit, if not for a 75-year healthcare “pre-funding” mandate that applies to no other public or private institution in the United States.

Warren Gunnels, aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, calls that mandate “the poison pill that has hammered the Postal Service … over 80 percent of the Postal Service deficit since that was enacted was entirely due to the pre-funding requirement.”

This death hug was part of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which was passed on a voice vote by a lame duck Republican Congress in 2006.  As I’ve reported, the mandate required the Postal Service, over 10 years, to pre-fund healthcare benefits for the next 75.  This unique burden costs USPS $5.5 billion a year. The new law also restricted the Postal Service’s ability to raise postage rates, or to provide “nonpostal services” that, in an e-diversion era, could be key to its future.  American Postal Workers Union president Cliff Guffey says the bill was designed “by those people who hate government … to destroy the Postal Service.  And that’s what they did.”

The Postal Service has long been required to provide “universal service”: delivering to all 151 million addresses in the United States. Conservatives promise [propaganda delinked] that private companies could serve the Postal Service’s function more efficiently, but when it’s their money on the line, the private companies themselves aren’t always so sure. Some of the packages sent through UPS or FedEx are actually delivered by the Postal Service, because those companies save money by contracting with USPS to serve more remote customers… [emphasis added]

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I’ve given you just enough of this article for a basic introduction to this issue.  I strongly advise you to click through to the source and read the rest.

If USPS dies, we will all pay more for postal service, especially those who live in outlying areas.  What you need to understand is this.  The only reason that the USPS is in financial trouble is that it was sabotaged by the Republican Party.