Pre-Funding Continues to Burden Postal Service Finances

Anonymous

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The Postal Service recently reported their 2nd Quarter earnings for Fiscal Year 2014, and it shows that they once again would have made a profit if not for the pre-funding of future retiree health benefits.  The Postal Services accounting books show a loss of 1.9 billion for the 2nd quarter.  However, if you exclude the mandated pre-funding payment, the USPS actually would be showing a year-to-date profit of more than one billion dollars.

The pre-funding payment, a payment required by the 2006 Postal Accountability Act (Public law 109-435), requires the Postal Service to pre-fund its future retiree health benefits, a 75 year obligation, in only ten years.  The Postal Service is the only government agency or corporation that is required by law to pre-fund.  While it is true the Department of Defense (DOD) also pre-funds future retiree health benefits, the DOD recieves Congressional-appropriated monies to pre-fund.  The Postal Service does not receive a single dollar to pre-fund.  The Postal Service operates on rate payer money, money it receives from selling of stamps and services, not taxpayer money.

The Pre-funding payments, which range from $5.5 to $5.8 billion a year through 2016, represent over 80% of the Postal Services losses since 2007.  In fact, the pre-funding requirements  represented 100% of the losses incurred by the Postal Service in the last fiscal year.  If  not for the pre-funding payment, the Postal Service would have posted a $623 million profit delivering the mail.

The House and the Senate bills currently in Congress continue to require the Postal Service to pre-fund.  Chairman Darrel Issa (R CA) has released a new postal discussion draft  (as of press time the bill has not been officially introduced) that would require the Postal Service pay half of the required payments in 2015 and 2016.  This would reduce the payments to approximately 2.8 billion and 2.9 billion, respectively.  The remaining obligation would be paid under an amortized schedule.

DELIBERATE SABOTAGE! THE POSTAL SERVICE AND THE TRUCKING INDUSTRY

 Miss American

Copyright 2012 All rights Reserved

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The first time I heard that the Post Office was considering cutting out Saturday deliveries, my antenna went up. “Oh no! They want to wreck that too”! But I wrote it off as a normal cost cutting measure given our dismal financial state of affairs. The next warning then came as an announcement that they were 8 something billion in the red on their pension commitments, and were talking about closing hundreds of regional centers, rural post offices, and lay workers off. My anger, when I hear about the neglect and demise of something that is so basic to our country, such as our Postal Service, goes over the top. You could say I go postal.

There’s always plenty of millions/billions for the bankers bonuses, trillions for wars and killing, and the latest weapons and technology to be used against Americans, but not a penny in sight to shore up the basic foundations of our society. When it comes to anything for us, the taxpaying consumers as we are known, “we’re broke” they tell us.

What Americans need in the way of help from our loving, caring government is a drop in the bucket compared to what they decide to spend to “keep us safe”!! I’ll take the odds and keep myself safe!! Just let me keep my freedom, please!!! Anyway, I don’t appreciate how many innocent people they have to kill, and how many other countries they have to obliterate to keep me safe. Hey! Anyone want to invest in a new airline? It’s called ‘Fly At Your Own Risk Dream Trips’.

Fact is Indeed Stranger than Fiction

There really was a new Presidential Executive Order issued December 30, 2009 in relation to Terrorism in the United States. No – the “Alphabet Connection” was not “officially” released (Wink. Wink), but it seems that the “We” in my reporting from yesterday has decreed through an Official real and truly true Executive Order as reported in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/30/us/politics/AP-US-Anthrax-Attack.html):

“If the nation ever faces a large-scale attack by a biological weapon like anthrax, the U.S. Postal Service will be in charge of delivering whatever drugs and other medical aid Americans would need to survive.”

Stop that! Now wipe off the keyboard and monitor. Good. Listen to We (oops) me.

Who better to be “in charge of dispensing ”medical countermeasures” to biological weapons because of its ”capacity for rapid residential delivery.””

Hey – lets deputize them as “Visiting Nurses” under the new “Obama Health Care Plan” and provide syringes too! That’ll get the economy rolling!

Personally I would have chosen FedEx or UPS.  My reasoning is that neither of their managements could afford to “stuff mail into closets and unused rooms at mail facilities in Waterbury and Wallingford because they don’t know how to keep up with such a high volume of mail…” That might be because their shareholders actually expect them to be profitable. Unlike the USPS which somehow managed to operate in the red to the tune of $68.09 million dollars in 2009 while still raising rates.

Or how about Wal-Mart? That corporation is the largest non-union civilian employer in the United States with 1.3 million employees (USPS has a paltry 656,000 unionized workers). Wait a minute – I see what that sneaky “We” guy is doing. You silly bugger – it’s a “bait and switch” tactic to pay back the Union Bosses that “We” ripped off behind closed doors during the Health Care debacle after they elected “We”.

Another little goodie is this one:

“Under the new order, federal agencies must develop a response plan that includes possible law enforcement escorts for Postal Service workers and gives anthrax ”primary threat consideration.””

One might question whether the “unionized” law enforcement escorts are there to “escort” or enforce, but that is going way too far. And why “anthrax”? Could it have anything to do with this story out of New Hampshire in which a third case of “natural” anthrax was identified  from African drums – wait – isn’t Nigeria in Africa?

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe yesterdays Executive Order could merge with todays Executive Order and save the “free-ish” World.

Excuse me. Off to call “We” in Hawaii.