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Who’s really to blame

By John Spring - Pembroke | Aug 22, 2020

The U.S. Postal Service is in the news a lot, lately. I see a lot of misinformation falsely explaining the financial predicament they are currently in. The experiences I share come from my 36 year career as a letter carrier.

First, some background. No, I’m not going to speak about mail delivery being in the Constitution(it is), or that Benjamin Franklin founded the Postal Service(He did). The background I want to talk about is found in its name. The United States Postal Service. Notice the last word. It was never meant to make money, but was a service to the public. Until 2006, the goal of the USPS was to break even, and they were quite successful at it

In practice, every few years, this would result in a penny or so increase in the price of stamps due to increased operating costs. The Post Office would then make money for a year or two, then break even for a year or two, then start losing money again. Right up until 2006, this cycle was pretty consistent. All done with NO taxpayer funds.

From 2004, through 2006, the Post Office was profitable for 3 years in a row. President Bush and Postmaster General Potter decided to require the Postal Service to completely pre-fund retiree health benefits 75 years into the future, resulting in a Congressional surcharge of $5.5 Billion(!!) paid yearly for 10 years. The profit of the USPS was three billion in 2004, in comparison.

During the final two years of the Bush administration, the country fell into a deep recession, continuing into the Obama administration, causing the Dow Jones to drop from 13,000 to under 7,000. Nobody did well around 2008, including the Post Office. Even with the steep decline in revenues caused by the recession, they still had to pay $5.5B a year causing problems that persist, even today.

This money was to fully fund retirees health care for the next 75 years. Was there a fund set aside to protect this money? Of course not. Remember the “Social Security Locked Box” that couldn’t be touched? How did that work out? No, that money was put into the general fund so Congress could spend it however they wanted. Big surprise. So, while you hear these holier than thou politicians talking about how poorly run the Postal Service is, please remember things were running exactly how a public service should work, right up until Congress and the GW Bush administration got their hands on it.

Remember the times. The GOP had decided that there wasn’t any more money available due to deficit concerns, exacerbated by tax cuts. Yet their greed forced them to find more money, despite their pledges for fiscal austerity.By putting the $5.5B in the general fund, they were now free to spend those billions for re-election and pet projects every year! Even when the Postal Service couldn’t make the required payments, Congress spent it anyway, rationalizing it by saying USPS would pay it back eventually. This caused 2 things to happen. First, was the ability to continue spending non existent money, and secondly, it made Congress hesitant to address the situation, as this would take their accumulated $55B slush fund off the Federal books. Let’s look at what this really is; While Congressional republicans continue, even today to falsely gnash their teeth and cry over “Another Government Bailout”, the truth is actually just the opposite. That $5.5 billion paid yearly to fund health care, was actually subsidizing Congress to the tune of 55 Billion over the course of 10 years(even when USPS couldn’t pay it).

With very little fanfare, postal employees continue doing their jobs, even with COVID sickening thousands of them, and more than a few dying, they continue delivering medicine to vets and seniors and parcels to everyone else that shops online. So, I guess the question becomes, “Who is to blame for this fiasco we find ourselves in?”.

Donald Trump just hired Louis DeJoy as the new Postmaster General. He was a major donor in Trump’s 2016 campaign. He also holds extensive stock in UPS and FedEx. They are both actively dismantling the Postal Service as we speak because of mail-in balloting. Even though his mail fraud committee came up empty after the 2016 election, Trump is trying those same falsehoods again. He has stated if everyone voted by mail, he would get beat. So, he has decided destroying an American institution is worth it to get re-elected. At this point, what’s a little more dishonesty? Who would have ever thought our government could act like this? Ben Franklin is rolling over in his grave.

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