The Post Office has come under increasing criticism for its financial problems, and now the Postmaster General says Saturday deliveries will end. Even worse, there’s talk of privatizing. But some believe the Post Office is being targeted because the public sector, in general, is under attack by the GOP.
Unlike any other agency or business in the US, the Post Office was required, beginning in 2006, to pre-fund retirement benefits 75 years in advance - a standard that would shut down any other agency or business.
Despite this unfair and unprecedented burden, the Post Office continues to guarantee mail privacy; it provides service at equal cost to rich and poor, wherever they live, and it is a reliable source of middle-class employment for minorities.
Furthermore, it’s one of the few government agencies mandated by the Constitution, and it could compete and survive if only Congress would stop trying to kill it.
Tell Congress, don’t privatize the Post Office.
We, the undersigned, are opposed to privatizing the US Postal Service.
The standards placed upon this agency were already rigorous when the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) required the USPS, alone, to prefund retirement benefits 75 years in advance - and do so in just 10 years, creating an additional yearly burden of over five billion dollars. The Deming Headlight noted that this would be equivalent to “paying a 30-year mortgage on an expensive home in just two and a half years, or all of your paycheck going into Social Security.” It also means, adds DH, that the “The post office must pay a staggering $103.7 billion by 2016 for employees who have not even been hired yet; and this is on top of current pensions.”
In addition to passing the 2006 law on retirement benefits, Republicans in Congress have taken other steps to block the Post Office from raising revenue, says AlterNet, and they also forced it to remove public-use copiers and blocked it from setting up a secure online system so Americans could make monthly bill payments. Adding to all this is the fact that the Post Office hasn’t received any direct taxpayer dollars since the 1980s.
Despite the lack of support it gets, the Post Office is legally required to serve all US residents, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality, and yet it still must compete with private services like UPS and FedEx.
According to Alternet, the Post Office is second only to WalMart as the largest employer in the country, but unlike “Walmart, which gets away with paying so little that employees qualify for government assistance, the Postal Services is unionized, pays reasonable wages and benefits and receives no government subsidies.”
We need more agencies like the US Postal Service, and it’s very likely it would have no problems competing and surviving if Congress would support it, or at least stop trying to kill it.
We request that this attack on the US Postal Service end. Do NOT privatize our Post Office!
Thank you for your time.
