Trump administration considers leveraging emergency coronavirus loan to force Postal Service changes
Source: Washington Post
By
Jacob Bogage and
Lisa Rein
April 23, 2020 at 1:36 p.m. PDT
The Treasury Department is considering taking unprecedented control over key operations of the U.S. Postal Service by imposing tough terms on an emergency coronavirus loan from Congress, which would fulfill President Trumps longtime goal of changing how the service does business, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Officials working under Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who must approve the $10 billion loan, have told senior officials at the USPS in recent weeks that he could use the loan as leverage to give the administration influence over how much the agency charges for delivering packages and how it manages its finances, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are preliminary.
Trump has railed for years against what he sees as mismanagement at the Postal Service, which he argues has been exploited by e-commerce sites such as Amazon, and has sought to change how much the agency charges for delivery packages. (Amazons founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
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Under the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus relief passed last month, the Treasury was authorized to loan $10 billion to the USPS, which says it may not be able to make payroll and continue mail service uninterrupted past September. Mnuchin rejected a bipartisan Senate proposal to give the Postal Service a bailout amid the negotiations over that legislation, a senior Trump administration official and a congressional official previously told The Post.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/23/10-billion-treasury-loan-usps/
That is all.
rzemanfl
(29,554 posts)Faux pas
(14,643 posts)way too kind
marble falls
(56,974 posts)post, it needs to pay its own freight.
PSPS
(13,577 posts)marble falls
(56,974 posts)PSPS
(13,577 posts)Why? Because they make money on it. No sorting required on bulk mail. The sender does it all.
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)A bit of the old in-and-out with your quid pro quo.
That's real horrorshow. I viddy what you did there. Tolchok the Post Office right in the yarbles.
njhoneybadger
(3,910 posts)bucolic_frolic
(43,024 posts)in negotiations with Congress. This is upside down, inside out, and very crooked
Progressive Jones
(6,011 posts)My wife is with USPS for several years, and they've been gunning for USPS since before she got there.
Nobody who works there is worried about this.
mahina
(17,602 posts)Thekaspervote
(32,688 posts)2005 bill that hobbled them. Mcturtle needs to be pressured to bring it to vote
benfranklin1776
(6,443 posts)Thats the rotten core of the problem. Time to invoke cloture and make the fuckera go on record to either support a constitutionally mandated service that is a lifeline for their constituents and, I might add, a bedrock community anchor in many rural communities or vote in favor of supporting the greedy jackals that want to carve it up for their plunderous ends. If they vote for the latter theyll reap a grievous electoral price. Also Elizabeth Warrens bill to bring back the postal banks if approved would be a godsend in this crisis to those without access to traditional banks.
quaint
(2,551 posts)Thekaspervote
(32,688 posts)c-rational
(2,587 posts)HuskyOffset
(888 posts)Sorry everyone, I've been drinking diet Mt Dew for a couple hours.
Progressive Jones
(6,011 posts)Roy Rolling
(6,905 posts)See how successful he is making changes after they have the money.
Thats how Republicans do business, take the money, Postoffice, and tell Mnuchin to take a hike. Take the post office to court.
Nancy Pelosi needs to hold up any further assistance to private companies until the Post Office gets what it needs. Democrats need to adopt a take-no-hostages approach with the Republican criminals.
sheshe2
(83,623 posts)You talk about their mismanagement? That takes some brass balls to say, look in the FUCKING mirror and your own failed presidency.
Your entire life has been a failure, you have bankrupted every business that you owned. You built what you did from the money daddy gave you. You have NEVER earned a honest dollar in your life. STFU!
I apologize for my language.
bucolic_frolic
(43,024 posts)This is an attempt to breakup the USPS. How about charging private carriers more who use the USPS for end delivery? Because several of them do it.
And it would not be fair to break it up and raise rates to deliver mail to suburban or rural communities who expected free curbside delivery forever!
rickyhall
(4,889 posts)Kaiserguy
(740 posts)once they control the PO. Oh look a ballet from a registered Democratic voter. I don't know how it got lost says Mnuchin.
LisaM
(27,791 posts)Last edited Fri Apr 24, 2020, 12:20 PM - Edit history (1)
Press him on this at the briefing today.
I have a love-hate relationship with these briefings. I can't stand him or the sight or sound of him, and I really don't appreciate the droningly-boring recitation of statistics and test types they all list out in their soporific manner as if they're trying to lull us into believing anything is normal.
But if one reporter can ask the right question and get him to flip out, he reveals his true self, and that can sometimes have positive results, since it shows moderate voters the repellent person we know him to be.
Progressive Jones
(6,011 posts)A good friend of mine is pretty much a text book Centrist, and he can teeter Left or Right.
He liked W at the start, and then soured on him. He went on to think Obama was great. Voted for him twice.
He didn't vote for Trump in 2016. He "just couldn't do that !" He's as pissed off at the GOP as the rest of us.
He says the GOP lost a potential voter for life.
I think there are a lot more people like my friend than meet the eye.
They all need to see Trump for who he is. Most won't stay with the dark side.
maxsolomon
(33,232 posts)and the death of my record-selling side hustle.
<$4 to send an LP anywhere in the USA now. without Media Mail, it will go up to $10.
Dial H For Hero
(2,971 posts)If I have to send them by Parcel Post (the next least expensive option) my sales will dry up.
yaesu
(8,020 posts)needs to be put on a leash. nt
no_hypocrisy
(46,009 posts)Chainfire
(17,446 posts)The Postal Service works too well for Trump's taste, so he orders up the wrecking ball.
aggiesal
(8,906 posts)They mention pension costs, but never mention the "Poison Pill" that the Republicans put in a bill in 2006, forcing the USPS to fund a pension plan 75 years out. And those payments had to made within a 10 year period. So they had to fund 75 years worth in 10 years.
That's funding a pension plan for people who haven't been born yet.
This article explains it brilliantly, much better than I could.
https://theweek.com/articles/767184/how-george-bush-broke-post-office
Then when they can't make payments, the USPS declares bankruptcy, and it becomes Profitized (this should be a new word, instead of privatized).
Along with breaking up the largest UNION in the U.S. "The Postal Union". This is the Republicans grand plan, to break apart this union.
Prior to the "Poison Pill" the USPS was making a profit, to the point that they were in the process of converting their gas driven vehicles into electric vehicle.
This stopped all those plans.
Igel
(35,268 posts)It made no sense.
Still doesn't.
https://www.truthorfiction.com/is-usps-losing-money-because-of-a-2006-pension-law/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2019/05/13/why-aoc-is-mostly-wrong-about-post-office-pensions-an-explainer/#239d60a31746
There are some differences between the two, but I'm not sure they're massively contradictory. I like how the one link unravels the game of "telephone" and shows how one text was misinterpreted to produce the next and that produced the third, which became set in cement.
I know that pensions where I was a grad student were all prefunded, and had to stay at 100% (if they brought it up to 100% and the stock market was generous in its valuation, they could underpay the next year). Where I work now has a DCP that requires 100% prefunding. When my parents retired, their pensions were prefunded--my father took his in one lump-sum distribution, my mother chose the safe route and when the corporation went bankrupt it had not met its legal requirements--but that was explicit, it had not met its legal requirements. I keep hearing that no other entity does this, and that's just not true.
howardmappel
(80 posts)I certainly hope your graduate degree was not in Business, Economic, Law, Mathematics or anything other than PE. Because you are flat out wrong. No, most pensions are not pre-funded. In fact most pension funds are underfunded. Usually vastly underfunded. That is why there exists the Pension Guaranty Benefit Fund, which however is also vastly underfunded. And there exists no other business in the United States, NONE, that requires the same type of pre-funding that is required of the USPS. They are required to pre-fund the pensions for people who haven't been hired yet and who may not be hired for years. This is such fucking bullshit.
And let us not forget that the USPS is fucking provided for in the US Constitution. Read it sometime, you might learn something.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)Welcome to DU.
For the record, we're generally a bit nicer to each other than ... that ^^^
Might wanna take it down a notch or two. Just sayin'
aggiesal
(8,906 posts)Company B had an underfunded pension, so they bought Company A.
Company B then raided Company A's pension fund.
One of the rules is that if you raid a companies pension you are
not allowed to sell that company for 2 years.
Well, Company B would raid the pension fund every so often so
the 2 year clock would restart. Finally, Company B sold Company A
to a Military Industrial Complex company in 1999.
I guess Company B couldn't raid Company A's almost non-existent
pension fund any longer, they just got rid of the company from their books.
(I have no proof, but that was the scuttlebutt around Company A)
Scruffy1
(3,252 posts)Rates are set by the US Postal Commission who are appointed by the President.
marked50
(1,364 posts)pwb
(11,244 posts)They can wait until November.
dlk
(11,509 posts)Millions of Americans are seriously suffering and thousands dying but, hey, political expediency...
Pepsidog
(6,254 posts)LymphocyteLover
(5,635 posts)howardmappel
(80 posts)When no mail is delivered, no medications ordered online are delivered and when the other items we take for granted are no longer delivered. And, if god forbid, the USPS is privatized (all before 1/21/21), who is going to buy it -- think Jeff Bezos, probably out of the change he finds in his sofa. So what if it costs him 50 billion (probably won't), he can afford and now he has a constitutionally authorized government approved monopoly. A fucking license to print money.
LymphocyteLover
(5,635 posts)AllaN01Bear
(17,937 posts)because they cant lead they pick on the post office or amtrak.
olddad65
(599 posts)Even if that means killing the post office.