Greetings!
I conducted a personal survey of friends and family, asking “what do you think about the current situation with the post office?” Not one of the people I asked had any clue about the real story. Most came up with media-driven ideas about email, private competition, or inefficiency causing the post office to “go broke”.
In 2006, HR 6407 was passed by an ideological lame duck congress, effectively condemning the postal service to death. Among other things HR 6407, the “postal accountability and enhancement act”, made the postal service PRE-FUND their healthcare benefits 75 years in advance, guaranteeing benefits for workers not even born yet. This funding requirement is a mandate faced by no other public agency or private business, but to add insult to injury the law required the expense be covered in a ten year period! This unfairly added over 5.5 billion dollars to the expenses on their books each year. Just removing this bizarre burden from their accounting would accurately reflect their $611 million profit over the last four fiscal years!
The post office was called for in the Constitution and has operated with great success for over 236 years. It draws no federal money and is totally self-funded. If you removed the insane mandate they operate at a great profit and are one of the most efficient organizations ever. Everyone complains about going to the post office but nobody complains about the service performed by the carriers.
The assault on the post office is not just an assault on America’s largest remaining union, the APWU, but an assault on everyone. The loss of the post office would devastate large and small businesses, rural communities, and the elderly among many others. Even FedEx and UPS use the US Postal Service to reach outlying, nonprofitable areas. Privatization of the postal service would never fill these gaps. Mail sent through the US Post Office also carries legal protections not available in private companies, and would be a further attack on voting security and democracy. Do you want your ballot delivered by a biased corporation, without federal penalties for mishandling it? Think about direct mail, franking privileges, book rates, rural connection and much more. Botttom line- Do you really think UPS or FedEx will deliver your letters across the country for 44 cents, with the same benefits?
There are two competing bills to rescue the Post Office from its current unnecessary dilemma. HR 1351, sponsored by Democrat Stephen Lynch, would simply allow the USPS to apply billions of dollars in pension overpayments to the healthcare prepayment mandate. The bill currently has the support of the APWU and over 200 co-sponsors but is being held in committee while the chairman, Republican Darrell Issa, pushes HR 2309. Issa’s bill would establish a “solvency authority” with the power to unilaterally cut wages, abolish benefits, and end protection against layoffs. It would also implement $1 billion worth of Post Office closures in the first year, and another $1 billion in the second year.
One bill would fix the problem; one would push privatization and union busting. Sound familiar yet? Conservative’s favorite themes. Don’t let the post office be dismantled and privatized, learn the facts and educate EVERYONE you know. Congress created this false problem, and they can fix it!
Make a great day,
