US Postal Service cut: Do we really want another bailout?
罢辞诲补测鈥檚 New York Times that unless the postal service gets some help from Uncle Sam, mail delivery will cease entirely this winter.
What about those sponsored by the postal workers union claiming that no taxpayer money is needed to deliver the mail?
Nonsense as it turns out. 鈥淥ur situation is extremely serious,鈥� the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, told the Times. 鈥淚f Congress doesn鈥檛 act, we will default.鈥�
Delaware Democrat Thomas R. Carper says,
If we do nothing, if we don鈥檛 react in a smart, appropriate way, the postal service could literally close later this year. That鈥檚 not the kind of development we need to inject into a weak, uneven economic recovery.
Fannie, Freddie, GM, AIG, and now the U.S.P.S. Keeping another zombie alive with tax dollars or money from nowhere, is exactly what the economy doesn鈥檛 need.
The most urgent $5.5 billion that鈥檚 needed is to finance retirees鈥� future health care. So we鈥檙e not talking about the post office needing the dough to gas up the trucks or even pay current employees. Taxpayers are needed to pay the cost for mail that was delivered years ago.
But, it won鈥檛 be long (early next year) before the agency will run out of money entirely.
Mail volume has dropped 22% from five years ago, and it won鈥檛 be coming back. However, trimming the labor bill at U.S.P.S. is problematic. 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to fight this and we鈥檙e going to fight it hard,鈥� said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents 207,000 mail sorters and post office clerks. 鈥淚t鈥檚 illegal for them to abrogate our contract.鈥�
Labor costs amount to 80% of the U.S.P.S. expenses, while at UPS labor is 53% of expenses and at FedEx labor is only 32% of expenses. If either of these companies were having trouble paying their bills, it鈥檚 doubtful Congress would lend a sympathetic ear.
Instead of winning customers by offering better service, the postal service is lobbying Congress for approval to discontinue Saturday mail delivery. This just continues a trend that began years ago. No matter what technological innovations are developed, the U.S.P.S., as James Bovard ,
still delivers mail roughly the same way it was delivered in ancient Greece, when Herodotus coined the phrase, 鈥淣either snow, nor rain, not heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.鈥� The service downplays this motto these days since a few inches of snow or a frowning schnauzer can stop delivery for days. As postal expert John Haldi has concluded:
Despite the many advances in . . . mechanized handling technology, the Post Office鈥檚 chief accomplishment over the last 200 years has been limited to the introduction of durable, lightweight, colored nylon bags for use with airmail.
Before 1950 the mail was delivered twice a day, or a dozen times week. Soon postal customers can look forward to just five deliveries a week. Unless there is a holiday, of course.
Bovard describes the postal service as 鈥減robably the worst managed and one of the least honest corporations in America.鈥�
A perfect candidate for a Federal bailout.
