The USPS should remain free to continue delivering parcels on weekends so long as it actually makes money on them. How George Bush broke the Post Office. Postal Service, which has been losing customers for almost a decade, is still struggling to right itself. Congress also should direct the USPS to further increase prices on parcels, which USPS is free but sometimes hesitant to do. The reduction could be achieved through buyouts. CBS News. Historical Data on ... CBO Report Revealed Another Large Deficit. A crisis is being engineered to get people complaining about the "slow, inefficient" Post Office. So far, Congress hasn’t moved to bail it out. Postal Service is too big to fail. In neither case did the post office’s front office publicly share data that would help skeptical or simply baffled legislators come around to supporting its big ask. "The international community [should] work together in solidarity to stop this virus," he said. April 16, 2018. Jul 09, 2015 . Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, right as well as one of the postal unions. There are no signs that it has done so. -- Postmaster General Burleson issued a statement today, in which he said: View Full Article in Timesmachine », See the article in its original context from. The strike initially involved postal workers in only New York City, but it eventually gained support of over 210,000 United States Post Office Department workers across the nation. Amending the law to let the post office raise prices at the CPI plus 1 percent could bring in an additional $700 million in revenue per year. Ultimately, the CARES Act offered only a $10 billion supplemental lending line to the postal service. No doubt the USPS is hurting badly, and it could run out of cash and shut down. The next bailout needs to match money with some long-overdue reforms. Post Office. The Washington Post recently published an article asking if the post office should “be sold to save it.” It begins with an explanation of what the author sees as an unsustainable postal service: The U.S. Last week, USPS leadership tried again, telling the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the agency needed an eye-popping $75 billion to avoid going belly up. The USPS should be provided with a $1 billion annual appropriation in exchange for committing to deliver medicines and other critical supplies in the event of a national disaster. This change is way overdue — USPS cannot be expected to survive if most of its overhead cost is uncontrollable, especially in an era of lower demand for mail. The U.S. Deficit Trends . Exploding costs in New York’s popular health-insurance program has led to the biggest budget deficit since Governor Andrew Cuomo took office in 2011. Expected to post a deficit this year in excess of $8 billion, the postal service, which doesn't receive a dime of federal taxpayer subsidy, must pay the government roughly $5.5 billion annually. Strangely, it is not actually required to do anything in a crisis by either postal law or Executive Order 13527, the Obama-era directive on national responses to anthrax and biohazard attacks. comments. Again, demand for paper mail has plunged, and it is financially irresponsible to force mail carriers to haul mostly low-margin advertising mail more than five days per week. The Postal Service employs more than 97,000 military veterans and is one of the largest employers of veterans in the country. The Finance Commission provides a mechanism for the Centre to compensate for revenue loss incurred by states, which is referred to as post devolution revenue deficit grant. Sixth, the Treasury should forgive the USPS’ present debt, which is around $10 billion. And as it does, it may irreparably damage an agency that for years has been running multibillion dollar deficits and weighted down by $130 billion in unfunded employee benefits. In this crisis, the postal service matters even more: Tens of millions of Americans received a postcard from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently that reminded them to socially distance and take other precautions. The Postal Service Lost $3.9 Billion Last Year Despite a $1 billion increase in revenue, unsustainable personnel costs pushed USPS' losses to such great heights. POST OFFICE DEFICIT ABOUT $10,000,000; Burleson Says Exact Figures Are Not Ready, but for Nine Months It Was $8,000,000. The massive post office deficit that is driving management to commit institutional suicide by ending six-day delivery, closing half of the nation's 30,000 or so post offices and half its 500 mail-processing centers, and laying off more than 200,000 workers, is make-believe. Postal Service. All federal pension and retirement benefits are paid from the U.S. Treasury. Just wipe the books clean, because paying these debts is draining the Post Office’s cash, which should be invested in new delivery vehicles and overdue capital upgrades. “The Purple Book gives us an in-depth understanding of the risks we face from the universe of schemes we protect,” said PPF chief risk officer Stephen Wilcox. With the economy already in a free fall, a shutdown of the USPS might just tip the country into a depression. The Postal Service, which employs 650,000 people, is asking for $75 billion in aid from the government, and, according to The New York Times, another $14 billion to pay off debt related to a retirement benefits program ― a whopping $89 billion total. Latest News from. | Mario Tama/Getty Images. Not surprisingly, the deficit exploded from $459 billion in calendar 2008 to over $1.4 trillion in calendar 2009. (And Trump has his doubts.) $14,500,000 NOT EXPENDED Of Funds Appropriated for the Year -- New System Met Emergencies of the War. CNET. (When some postal workers went on strike in 1970, President Richard Nixon called out the National Guard to fill in; the possible economic calamity was that large.). Help Save Our Public Postal Service. Us Post Office Budget Deficit. Here’s a straightforward plan for how it could work, which would require only modest changes to law and would share the burden between the biggest stakeholders: the public, USPS workers, and the mailers and shippers who pay the USPS’ operating costs. Second, the Postal Service needs the liberty to fix the way it funds its retiree health benefits fund, which has a $70 billion shortfall. It is the lone government agency that visits our homes and businesses on most days, and with stores largely shut down, the USPS is keeping us supplied with food, clothes, distance-schooling materials for kids, prescription drugs, and books to keep our minds off what’s happening outside our doors. Which has not happened in the post office’s two-century ... of the more than $40 billion in its retiree health benefits fund in index funds. What legislators and the public know about the USPS’ financial health is little more than a few scattered data points that have appeared in news stories. This is in part the fault of USPS leadership, which played its cards badly in the run-up to the recent $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). Getty. But if it really wants Congress to open the purse strings for a rescue plan, the agency needs to put its cards on the table. Private delivery companies move a lot of packages, but don’t go to every household in the country; often they pay the USPS to carry small packages for the final stretch. ; Scottish Gaelic: Oifis a' Phuist) is a retail post office company in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of products including postage stamps and banking to the public through its nationwide network of post office branches. As every 6-year-old learns that there is real and there is make-believe. And unlike them, they actually would fix the agency’s structural deficit, grow USPS revenue, lower its costs and alleviate its debt load. Postal Service worker wears a face mask and gloves while crossing a downtown street in Los Angeles, California. A United States Postal Service delivery truck. On March 18, 1970, postal workers in New York City—upset over low wages and poor working conditions, and emboldened by the Civil Rights Movement—organized a strike against the United States government. The deficit-to-GDP ratio set a record of 26.9% in 1943 as the country geared up for World War II. A U.S Postal Service Inspector General study made it clear that this investment strategy all but ensures the agency will default on these obligations to its workers and the taxpayers will have to bail them out. WASHINGTON, July 4. The Jakarta Post Jakarta / Wed, January 8, 2020 / 11:20 am A customer applies for membership in an office of the Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan) in Jakarta. $14,500,000 NOT EXPENDED Of Funds Appropriated for the Year -- … Some of the people who qualify for relief checks from the IRS will receive them in their mailboxes. Presently, the agency gets no extra financial support when it serves in a crisis. Studies done some years back indicate cutting a day of mail delivery could trim $1 billion or more in USPS costs annually. | Scott Heins/Getty Images. Most federal pension dollars are invested much more broadly, and the USPS should be authorized to invest some of the more than $40 billion in its retiree health benefits fund in index funds. We all depend on it more or less, and so long as the coronavirus is around, we’ll be especially reliant on it. The law should be amended to require that collective bargaining decisions consider the financial health of the USPS. When it comes to the mail, the Covid-19 crisis is catching America in a vise. Compared with the more than $2 trillion in Covid-19 aid enacted to date, $16 billion is a drop in the bucket. President Obama entered office in early 2009 in the teeth of the Great Recession. Public debt already is $24 trillion, so the public is not terribly harmed by assuming this additional debt — especially if it helps stave off the collapse of the USPS. But the story's more complex than that. Full text is unavailable for this digitized archive article. Download. 13 From facilitating the nation’s largest one day food drive, to working with customers to prevent dog bites, to educating customers on consumer protection, to delivering holiday cheer to those in need, the Postal Service supports communities nationwide.. 12 Veterans. The deficit should be compared to the country's ability to pay it back. Paying its employees accounts for 80 percent of USPS’ budget. How much we do not yet know, but volume may already be down 30 percent. First, Americans need a guarantee that their mail will help them get through crises like this one, and the USPS needs money to do it. Any reform effort may have to come via the next Covid-19 legislation, which means the reforms need to be straightforward and packaged to draw support from the right and the left. The company is owned by UK Government Investments. Only a few Democrats publicly spoke up for helping the agency, and the GOP and President Donald Trump balked when a $30 billion bailout was dropped into a version of the House’s Covid legislation. As late as the 1970s, Congress gave the USPS an annual public service obligation appropriation to help it cover the costs of delivering mail to every American household, no matter how remote. Postmaster General Megan Brennan should get on Zoom and give a public presentation that shares the data on where mail volume, revenue and operating costs are and where they are headed. To put it into perspective, as a percentage of revenue, the post office ran a deficit of 12% of its total intake. Though 90 percent of its income is derived from the sale of stamps, the post office is also the largest savings bank in the country, and the largest agency with a transfer of money. And in November, with the virus still on the loose in the population, millions of worried Americans will depend on the USPS to vote. Although it’s expected to find a way to fund these obligations, the USPS may invest only in U.S. Treasuries, which deliver paltry annual returns. That ability is measured by the deficit divided by gross domestic product (GDP). By Dave Johnson. Passed by a Republican-led Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush, the PAEA gave the Postal Service new accounting and funding rules for … UN Secretary General António Guterres said now is "not the time" to cut funds to the WHO. Fourth, the postal service should be free to choose to stop delivering paper mail six days a week — once all the stimulus checks are in the public’s hands. Congress could appropriate $5 billion to the agency to use to give 100,000 of the most senior employees $50,000 buyouts tax free. 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