The War on the Postal Service

What is the Repub­li­can Party at peace with?

There is the War on Women.

There is the War on Voting.

There is the War on Entitlements.

There is the War on Science.

There is the War on Pub­lic Schools.

I’m prob­a­bly for­get­ting something.…

But who knew there was the War on the Post Office? Quite a stealth war, with the main offen­sive push tak­ing place back in 2006 when the Repub­li­can con­gress passed the Postal Account­abil­ity and Enhance­ment Act which was then signed by Pres­i­dent Bush.

Sec­tion 803 of Title VIII of the act

Estab­lishes in the Trea­sury the Postal Ser­vice Retiree Health Ben­e­fits Fund, to be admin­is­tered by OPM. Requires the Postal Ser­vice, begin­ning in 2007, to com­pute the net present value of the future pay­ments required and attrib­ut­able to the ser­vice of Postal Ser­vice employ­ees dur­ing the most recently ended fis­cal year, along with a sched­ule if annual install­ments which pro­vides for the liq­ui­da­tion of any lia­bil­ity or sur­plus by 2056. Directs the Postal Ser­vice, for each year, to pay into the above Fund such net present value and the annual install­ment due under the amor­ti­za­tion schedule.

The act includes this:

‘‘(3)(A) The United States Postal Ser­vice shall pay into such Fund—
‘‘(i) $5,400,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2007;
‘‘(ii) $5,600,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2008;
‘‘(iii) $5,400,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2009;
‘‘(iv) $5,500,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010;
‘‘(v) $5,500,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2011;
‘‘(vi) $5,600,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2012;
‘‘(vii) $5,600,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2013;
‘‘(viii) $5,700,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2014;
‘‘(ix) $5,700,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2015;
and
‘‘(x) $5,800,000,000, not later than Sep­tem­ber 30, 2016

That’s $55.8 bil­lion dol­lars over ten years.

And you thought the Postal Ser­vice was in finan­cial straits because it was not run efficiently.

Why would the Repub­li­can Party be at War with the Postal Ser­vice? I have no idea. But my guess would be that UPS and FedEx would pre­fer to not have to com­pete with the Postal Ser­vice. In defense of UPS and FedEx, I sus­pect the Postal Ser­vice does enjoy the advan­tage of the legacy of tax­payer sup­port in that many of the build­ings were con­structed with tax­payer funding.

But note that nei­ther UPS or FedEx or any­one else wants to do what the Postal Ser­vice does: deliver mail to 150 mil­lion addresses through­out the country.

Or it could be the Repub­li­can Party has it in for the Postal Ser­vice because

The Postal Ser­vice has been named the Most Trusted Gov­ern­ment Agency six con­sec­u­tive years and the sixth Most Trusted Busi­ness in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

We must not have the pop­u­lace trust­ing a gov­ern­ment agency.

Here is the post­ing I first read of this (I was referred to it on Facebook).

Here is another I found when I Googled. It is from six months ago, but it ref­er­ences H.R. 1351: United States Postal Ser­vice Pen­sion Oblig­a­tion Recal­cu­la­tion and Restora­tion Act of 2011, which still sits in com­mit­tee for almost a year now.

Tagged as: Postal Service, Republicans