Tag: 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.