Postmaster: Postal Service In Dire Financial Straits

[ellisonz]

Postmaster: Postal Service In Dire Financial Straits
by Robert Siegel
All Things Considered
<7 min 37 sec>

November 22, 2011

U.S. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe appealed to Congress on Monday to help him reform the Postal Service.

"We're in a deep financial crisis today because we have a business model that is tied to the past. We are expected to operate like a business, but do not have the flexibility to do so," he said at the National Press Club.

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People now send messages and pay bills online. First-class mail volume is falling at a rate of 7 percent a year. Last fiscal year, the Postal Service spent $70 billion and took in $65 billion. Most of its budget is payroll. There are 557,000 postal workers. In the private sector, only Wal-Mart employs more.

And now, new legislation aims to shrink the Postal Service. While no one expects the Postal Service to be restored to the grandeur it knew 100 years ago, members of Congress who oversee the Postal Service speak of reforming and rescuing it.

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/22/142664274/postmaster-postal-service-in-dire-financial-straits

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. HR 2113 part of the solution

He knows it...

[tabatha]

2. This is a crisis manufactured by Republicans.

"It was only a few years ago that the USPS was considered not only stable, but thriving. The biggest volume in pieces of mail handled by the Postal Service in its 236-year history was in 2006. The second and third busiest years were in 2005 and 2007, respectively. But it was two events: one crafted during the Bush years and another supervised by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, that would cripple this once great institution.

Perhaps it was its booming history that first drew Congress' attention to the Postal Service in 2006 when it passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA), which mandated that the Postal Service would have to fully fund retiree health benefits for future retirees. That's right. Congress was demanding universal health care coverage.

But it even went beyond that. Congress was mandating coverage for future human beings.

"It's almost hard to comprehend what they're talking about, but basically they said that the Postal Service would have to fully fund future retirees' health benefits for the next 75 years and they would have to do it within a ten-year window," says Chuck Zlatkin, political director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union.

http://www.truth-out.org/last-union/1315492298

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. The bill I pointed to above

Is exactly part of the solution, restoring money's to the USPS.

Some people can't wait to bust the largest union in the united states and privatize it. They'll cry of course when ups don't deliver to so far up the rural road we can't make money.

[ellisonz]

6. Absolutely.

[msongs]

4. raise the rates on all the unwanted trash they put in my mailbox every day nt

[Liberal Gramma]

7. Looks like the best place for finding revenue to me.

And if an increase in postal rates for third-class junk mail means it's not affordable to send it out, all the better.

[Aerows]

5. "Let's manufacture a crisis!"

"OMG... OMG....

It's a DISASTER."

This dude sees a way to get big bucks as a consultant or a CEO "privatizing" the post office. Do you really think he is going to charge LESS? No, he's trying to do PR to charge MORE.

Stop these idiots from robbing people blind by crying wolf. You can only cry it so many times before the people call you on it, and guess what? That has happened.

If you can't do your job, then well, step down, or work with what you have. If you can't, prepare to get censured.

This isn't difficult.