The nearly bankrupt U.S. Postal Service on Thursday reported losses of $57 million per day in the last quarter and warned it will miss another payment due to the U.S. Treasury, just one week after its first-ever default on a payment for future retiree health benefits.
From April to June, losses totaled $5.2 billion, up $2.1 billion from the same period last year.
The mail agency said it is being hurt significantly by mounting expenses for future retiree health benefits. Those expenses, mandated by Congress in 2006, made up $3.1 billion of the post office’s quarterly loss, while workers compensation tacked on another $1.1 billion in expenses. The agency’s operating loss was $1 billion, mostly due to declines in first-class mail.
And the USPO missed the August payment for retiree benefits and…
The mail agency says it will miss the second $5.6 billion payment due on Sept. 30, also for future retiree benefits, as cash runs close to zero.
What is going to happen? The PO wants to curtail costs by halting Saturday delivery and a plan to close post offices across the country. But Congress won’t let them.
My question is how does the PO continue. Nothing I’ve heard talks about keeping the PO viable in the future. We need action and we need it quickly. Close these damn post offices and combine the facilities. Stop delivery on Saturday. Do we need to think about privatizing the Post Office?
Maybe Obama was correct while talking about private companies being able to do some things better than public/government entities back in 2009 when he publicly stated…
“… UPS and FedEx were doing fine, but it’s the post office that’s always having problems.”
We need to stop the bleeding, to the tune of
The USPS lost 14.1 billion in 2011 alone, where will it end?????
Your thoughts?
The bills forcing the USPS to forward fund pensions and health insurance and to be run like a business make as much sense as a for profit prison and military system. By that I mean ZERO sense. You degrade the post office, you strip whole areas of this country out of the economy. Just plain stupid, mean spirited, you almost have to believe that these folks want serfs not citizens. Ben Franklin must be spinning, wherever his bones may be.
if the USPS were a business they could say that mail service to North Dakota is losing money so we’re not going to serve that state anymore. But they can’t because constitutionally the USPS is required to serve all Americans, they CAN”T be run like a business, it’s a public service. It’s like saying the Army can’t protect the west coast because it cost too much money. Just a dimwitted post.
Because the USPS provides a service to the country instead of performing like a for-profit business, that doesn’t mean it has to piss money away. Even the USPS themselves would make a lot of changes if Congress would let them. I have 3 post offices (and zip codes) in my town and they are not needed, the aren’t. We could survive with one of those three buildings (and the Postmasters and any other administrative costs which go with them).
We do not need Saturday delivery and could stand to go another day before my 20 pounds of junk mail gets delivered.
But rather than sounded insulting and mean spirited due to whatever isn’t right in your life, why not suggest something that can be done to fix the USPS?
I don’t know how much you would save from shutting down post offices. You will still need pretty much the same number of people and trucks to deliver all that mail. Now if they were allowed to drop their obligation to serve every community no matter how small and unprofitable, then they would have a much better chance. I don’t see how the post office can possibly do the mission they are ordered to do without being allowed to restrict services or find new sources of revenue.
is condescending. Rather.
I just reacted to the condescending comments of me being “completely lost” and my post being “dimwitted”. Are these ok remarks in your book or do you think we can have tit-for-tat?
I didn’t call you “lost” or “dimwitted”, I instead described the direction of your post as a “load of baloney” — and then offered a reasonably substantive illustration of why. I note that rather than acknowledge that the GOP is again manufacturing a totally pointless “crisis” (other than attempting to again embarrass President Obama), you choose to complain about johnk’s insults.
It appears to me that you avoid a substantive discussion of the issue you yourself raised. While I agree that his words were perhaps ill-chosen, it seems to me that the dialog here is improved by trying to stay focused on substance.
They weren’t okay and my comment “a word for johnd” preceded this one and addressed precisely that.
First off this is a substantive post. And yes, I agree that if you measure the USPS as if it were a business, it does badly. And that’s why it’s not a business! Would all those rural folk get free or even cheap delivery if it weren’t for the post office? Even UPS and FedEx rates would go up on them if the USPS went away. I get that. And I get that postal service is one of those civilization things we liberals like.
But if we want non-troll conservatives, we should at least be willing to have people disagree with us and say things that we think are stupid or immoral. Why? Because conservatism sounds stupid or immoral to liberals. The reverse is also true. So if we are going to have a discussion across the aisle we need to behave extra better.
And yes, indeed, johnd doesn’t exactly return the favor. I’m going to tease him for the rest of the campaign season about calling Senator Reid an ass-wipe.
But if you don’t reward the best possible behavior from an ideological opponent, you’ll only get atrocious behavior.
…Congress put some rather onerous requirements on USPS a few years back which should be reversed. I’d reverse that before talk about anything more drastic.
And if only they ran they ran the Pentagon like a self-funding, revenue neutral, self-pensioning business!
Is that the red state voters who keep electing the morons that gutted the Postal Service are the ones that are most likely to lose service. Take that deep south, mountain west, and prairie plains! But in all honesty I want the mail to run, its a government monopoly that makes sense and works since everyone has a right to receive mail. Also privatization in every other nation has been an unmitigated disaster, as would gutting the program by half like is being proposed now.
Oh. Now I remember.
and ask why they haven’t down something to fix the problem. IF you think Congress is the problem, then make Congress fix it.
You know perfectly well that members of Congress from rural districts will *never* agree to allowing the post office to curtail service in unprofitable postal districts.
They need Congress’ OK to do anything, no wonder they can’t deal.
but I see nothing wrong with running it like a business. Locate people, equipment and resources where they are needed and not where Congressmen want them. Adjust to changes in technology and society as email, texting, on-line banking/commerce has dwindled the volume of mail. Charge more postage for the bulk junk mail we all receive.
Nothing wrong with having a filly funded pension, especially since the unfunded pension liability so many other government organizations have will be killing our states, counties, cities and municipalities in the upcoming years.
The problem isn’t that they’re being forced to fully fund the pensions; the problem is that they’re being forced to fully fund 30 years worth of pensions in 10 years time.
That’s impossible for any company to do.
Since that change was made (by Republicans, no less), the post office has gone from having huge surpluses to huge deficits, even though there’s been little change to their revenue or costs outside of pensions.
Shocker. /sarcasm off
One simple change would fix this problem (allowing the USPS to fund pensions as they go, not having to ‘prepay’ them for 30 years), but the Republicans aren’t interested in having a USPS that demonstrates good governance.
That goes against their three biggest priorities, 1. Being partisan assholes willing to torpedo the country if it stops Democrats from getting positive press, 2) Demonstrating that government can, in fact, work, and most importantly, 3) creating manufactured crises so that they can then repaint the organization or institution in its own image (which will almost certainly mean trying to privatize the USPS).
Let the post office offer bank accounts.
And then recognize that while this is a public service, it is an increasingly obsolete public service. Do away with weekend deliveries, close a lot of local post offices, sell a lot of property so you no longer have to maintain it.
Plenty of public services aren’t open on weekends. I’m not saying to close post offices we need but there is gigantic waste everywhere. Reprice parcels to be closer to what they cost to ship. Maybe get into some additional business such as…
I need to send money to someone so I go on-line (or to my local PO) and pay $100. The local PO of the destination prints a USPS money order (in one of those automated sealed envelopes like a rebate check) and it gets delivered the same day… for a small service fee.
1. Doesn’t save very much, and 2) would hurt the economy.
Morever, the notion that the post office is “an increasingly obsolete public service” demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of modern day America.
With businesses like Amazon rising, and Best Buy floundering, reliable, affordable and convenient postal service is becoming more important, not less.
Closing post offices that are revenue negative would surely save a great deal of money, but I somehow doubt Republicans will be okay with their constituents having to travel an hour or two to get to the nearest post office that can actually stay afloat without being subsidized by the ‘profits’ of post offices from larger communities.
This is another manufactured “crisis” set up by the GOP to strangle government. The meme of “privatizing” the Post Office is garbage, and doesn’t work. Congress can fix the “crisis” by dealing with the pension funding in a reasonable way.
Sadly, working together to find a reasonable solution that works for the good of all is anathema to the current GOP.
Tom, your party is not perfect so please look at them objectively from time to time.
The bill which appears to be gutting the USPS, Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act… 2 of the 3 cosponsors were Democrats and the bill passed in the Senate by Unanimous Consent 44 Democrats able to stop anything if they wanted to.
Danny Davis [D-IL7]
John McHugh [R-NY23]
Henry Waxman [D-CA30]
Not every boogeyman has a GOP emblem on his/her back.
The bill you cite was passed in 2006, when both Democrats and Republicans thought we were in a boom, thought the economy was healthy, and thought that funding the USPS pensions was a wise idea.
That was before we all learned that the boom was, in fact, a fraudulent bubble created by Wall Street with the encouragement of the Bush administration. That was before the crash of 2008, proving that the economy was NOT healthy.
Several choices are available that solve the problem, including HR1351 (with 230 co-sponsors) and Senate Postal Reform Bill S1789 (which has already passed the Senate).
The House refuses to act on these, because the GOP leadership insists on pushing Rep Darrel Issa’s bill that will effectively dismantle the USPS. Mr. Issa can’t get enough support to pass his measure, and he won’t allow the House leadership to bring either alternative to a vote.
The GOP leadership has manufactured this “crisis”, using the USPS as a pawn in yet another of their relentless destructive games of chicken.
This phoney “crisis” most certainly DOES wear the GOP emblem.