The Postal Service is NOT BROKE! NOT AT ALL!!!

[tblue]

The Repubs passed a law that mandates the Postal Service to do what NO OTHER entity of any kind is forced to do: Have on-hand, within 10 years, funds to pay pensions for SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS! This is a manufactured crisis intended to push privatization of our public mail service, even though Congress has authority over post offices per the Constitution.

"No other government agency or private company bears this burden, which forces the Postal Service to fund a 75-year liability in 10 years — at a cost of more than $5 billion annually. Without the mandate, the USPS would have shown a surplus of $611 million over the past four fiscal years."

http://www.postalnewsblog.com/2011/09/09/supervisors-join-with-unions-in-effort-to-save-usps/

[rsmith6621]

1. The REPUKES are the masters of Manufactured Crisis

[defendandprotect]

32. KR -- also known as RW lies,Goebbels's style propaganda --

[INdemo]

59. Here is a way the Repukes could have anything they wanted..

only requirement..They have to take all the Teabaggers including Paul Ryan with them..Oh and Rick Perry could have his own dictatorship and his very own ponzie scheme...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44488191

[ljm2002]

40. That they may be, but why...

...do they keep getting away with it?

Some Democrats had to have voted for that provision. And of course now we have our President championing a payroll tax holiday, when anyone who is paying attention knows this will be used to undermine the strongest argument for leaving Social Security alone when addressing the deficit -- namely, Social Security has never contributed one cent to any deficit. Well now that will change.

None of this happens only because slimy Republicans support it. It happens because equally slimy, or possibly inept Democrats go along.

[awoke_in_2003]

45. because our side...

either

A. doesn't call them on it
B. they are in on it (most likely scenario)

[rucognizant]

87. read THIS!

Let the revelations continue..........the veterans are coming home!
Nothing new here but it it is interesting to see the entire story, ( that we have pieced together over the years, obscure news article by news article, & bookmarked piece by piece,
summed up in one article, by a respected if somewhat controversial editor. There are many interesting articles in this publication.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/09/09/chatter-obama-sought-arrest-of-bush-and-cheney-for-911-treason/


there is one detail that is assumed rather than explained.

<"If 3,000 people could be murdered on 9/11 without the blink of an eye, the daughter of a president could be given cancer just as easily.">

I posted to AW 6 or 7 years ago......Helen Thomas describes in one of her books ( sorry can't remember which one) that I took out from our local library,( not indy publisher, not banned, not burned) how she was talking to Martha Mitchell on the phone, when thugs broke into her hotel room, tackled her and injected her in rear end. Within a year Mitchell got cancer and died, thus eliminating a loud voice for the TRUTH. Attempts to discredit Mitchell as a crazy alcoholic hadn't been sufficient. She was fearful enough for her life to check into a hotel rather than stay at home, & to keep in touch with Helen, a friend. Her husband John Mitchell had already been put in prison, I think.

[certainot]

88. because the left ignores the 1000 coordinated radio stations that do the groundwork for all this shi

t.

those stations need picketing, their local sponsors need to be shamed,and the universities that broadcast sports on those stations and therefore endorse the racism and global warming denial need to be shamed until they find alternatives.

these lies become reality because the left only reacts AFTER they have already been pounded into the earholes of 50 mil a week and therefore become acceptable to be repeated by politicians and media. team limbaugh are protected by call screeners and prompted by paid callers and need the left to get in their face and call them liars in real time.

ignoring talk radio the last 20 years has been the biggest political mistake in history.

[live love laugh]

80. Newsflash: Postal Service is the largest UNIONIZED govt agency and probably largest of even

private companies.

Did you know that the largest employer in the US is Walmart and that the Postal Service is the second largest employer?

[dogmoma56]

84. have you read "Shock Doctrine"? they've committed several genocides.>link

thus is a MUST READ.!!!!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315915523&sr=8-1

this looks real interesting.. i just ordered it

http://www.amazon.com/Wrecking-Crew-Conservatives-Government-Themselves/dp/0805090908/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1315915546&sr=8-11

[prairierose]

86. dogmama, The Wrecking crew is a very good book...

your blood will boil as he explains how we got to this place where corporations get more welfare than anything else and the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves in every situation where we need help.

[dogmoma56]

91. i am reading robert wrights 'The Evolution of God', the rich outsourcing manufacturing and unfair

cheap imports destroyed the economy of Israel peaking about 800 BCE. in those days the Temples of the god/s of the foreign country doing business with your country were essentially the Embassy's. they let you build yours in their country. that is how the Polytheistic Pantheon developed.. the priests were the corporate agents. it was more business than religion.

my info is from the archaeological record, he explains how history and the bible were later changed due to political and economic manipulations thru many different eras . not by a god.

Monotheism developed as a grass roots movement against government run Corporate Capitalism starving their children while selling out the country to enemies for gold jewelery, fancy food and fancy clothes. they wanted the foreign temples and their imports out of the country. the poor and disenfranchised very survival was dependant on it.

the big rich Elite politicians like Solomon and Ahab that praised an internationalist policy thought it was good for the country.. it was.. but only for them and their lackeys.
Hosia saw an increasingly poor Israel whose poverty is only deepened by international forces..he says, "The standing grain has no heads,it shall yield no meal: if it were to yield, foreigners would devour it."

just like today, 2800 years later nothing has changed. except this time by christians duped by the Capitalists and turned into brainwashed ignorant increasingly belligerent mobs.. selling themselves out to the elite's interests

[hedgehog]

2. KICK!

David Brin holds that the Postman is the most respected US employee -

go for the book, not the movie -

The Postman - David Brin

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. Great book.

Movie - not so much.

[awoke_in_2003]

46. and he always knocks twice...

:)

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. Why the HELL were Democrats so quiet about this>

[Booster]

15. Why are they so quiet about EVERYTHING?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

25. well, look what happens if they speak up:

Eliot Spitzer - gone
Weiner - gone

there are other examples, too. But I would not be surprised that some of them willing to break a story are contacted quietly, and have a sudden change of mind.

[obxhead]

27. Spitzer

:rofl:

Creates a campaign against prostitution and then gets caught with a high dollar prostitute.

He did that to himself.

[Booster]

35. And so did Weiner. What an idiot. Both of them.

[provis99]

50. did Don Siegelman do it to himself too?

[Booster]

63. Did anybody mention Don Siegelman?

[provis99]

70. yes, I did. Did you not read my subject line?

The one where it asks if anyone did this to Don Siegelman.:eyes:

[Booster]

71. Well, then you should be the one to answer the question. lol

[provis99]

73. you didn't read it again.

Here maybe this will help
DID FUCKING DON FUCKING SIEGELMAN FUCKING DO IT TO HIS FUCKING SELF, OR DID SOME OTHER FUCKING FUCKER FUCKING DO IT TO FUCKING HIM???????????

Is that clear now, dimwit?

[WildEyedLiberal]

89. Why are you comparing Don Siegelman to Spitzer and Weiner?

Dimwit.

Do you think all the fucks make your point more legitimate?

[Lasher]

90. !!

:spray:

That's funny but you're gonna get that one deleted I'll bet.

[obxhead]

72. Yes, that is true, however

even if Weiner had been totally upfront and truthful he still would have been forced out. What he did wasn't illegal. Stupid, but not illegal.

Spitzer went on a campaign against a crime and was then caught taking part in that very criminal activity.

Both self inflicted wounds, but of vastly different calibers.

[awoke_in_2003]

47. Complicity. nt

[Skittles]

53. because they have no leader

[fascisthunter]

56. because they want the same BS, but want to put up a front...

to fool the loyalists in the party.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. I salute your outrage.

:patriot:

[abelenkpe]

5. K&R nt

[spanone]

6. k&r....

[Generic Other]

7. How do we keep up with all the dirty tricks? They are assaulting us from every diriection!

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a war on the worker!


War on the Worker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9hzOTK56hk

[Kingofalldems]

8. I was told this was also a negotiating ploy by Postal management

Union contracts are up in November.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. The clerks already had their contract delivered.

[Kingofalldems]

20. Not so for Letter Carriers

[sfpcjock]

10. Thanks

[valerief]

11. That doesn't mean the assholes running our govt don't want to virtually blow it up. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. Worth repeating.

Some folks just don't want to get it.

[Freddie Stubbs]

14. The USPS pre-funding its pensions was noncontroversial when Congress required it in 2006

Not one single Democrat opposed it.

[Kingofalldems]

19. So?

Doesn't make it right. Non responsive BS thrown out there one more time.

[Freddie Stubbs]

24. Why would a Democrat like Henry Waxman cosponsor this bill if it was an evil plot to

financially cripple the USPS?

[Kingofalldems]

26. He was wrong. Simple as that

[jimbo3]

38. No, he wasn't wrong.

Henry Waxman did exactly what the postal unions requested of him when he co-wrote and sponsored the bill.

I spoke with a high-up from the letter carriers union last week about this. I've known this person for 20 years- I trust them, and have fought many battles against management with this person. I was told that the pre-funding requirement in the 2006 legislation was considered to be no problem by the union analysts, because the postal service, in 2006, was making enough money to cover that for the next 10 years. But then the financial crisis of 2007 hit, and a 20% decline in revenue as well, both of which were unforseen by the USPS, the unions, the republicans and the democrats. Recipe for disaster.

Of more concern than the pre-funding requirement, (which will probably be adjusted shortly), is the massive overpayment by the USPS into the pension and healthcare account, estimated to be over 50 billion dollars over the last 25 years. This administration, as well as congress, have known about this overpayment since January of 2010, 20 months now, and to date have passed no legislation to refund this money to the USPS.

[Kingofalldems]

49. Yes, this has been known for quite a while.

[brentspeak]

76. Answer: Because the GOP's original version of the bill would have broken the postal union right away

The Democrats managed to to eradicate the GOP-written language in the bill that would have immediately broken the postal union contracts back in 2006. However, the GOP was still running the show; the Bush administration made certain that an onerous prefunding requirement of ~ $5.5 billion/year would survive any changes made to the bill.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

16. k&r

[cyglet]

17. Nope.

But the feds wanted to make interest off us (and what have they done with the overpaid pension funds?). So, yes, very much manufactured. Our unions have testified as such before Congress. The worst thing is trying to do your job and the public keeps giving you whatever the postmaster general said to the press that day.

[mmonk]

18. True. I wrote about the pre-funding mandate here.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/mmonk/113

[Robb]

21. You're on top of this stuff, can I ask a stupid question?

My understanding is that USPS treats military service for former employees as part of their work history in computing retirement benefits -- so their retiring employees who are former military tend to retire sooner and/or at a better benefit rate.

I have a vague memory of a trade-off, the details of which are exceedingly murky in my weak mind. Didn't USPS successfully get out of that extra obligation (IIRC Treasury picked it up?) at the same time they took on this $5.5B/year millstone? Do you have any idea (or any idea where I'd start looking to find out) what was the savings of that in comparison to the pre-funding mandate?

[cyglet]

23. Well

Veterans have their time in service computed with their time working for USPS, so from the start they also get more vacation time and, yes, can retire sooner.

20 year military veterans are referred to as "double dippers" because they get military retirement and postal retirement.

I don't think there's any extra "rate" to people who served their 4-19 years in the military and were out, though CSRS was the old system and that is a higher burden than what I have (FERS), so in the 80s they were trying to get people to switch to FERS. I don't remember a tradeoff with the 2006 bill, but my mind is possibly as murky as yours :)

[mmonk]

55. Which obligation?

[Malikshah]

22. Darrell Issa is at the heart of this as well? Damn his skanky hide!!!

[harun]

28. Word. More fake crisis shock doctrine BS.

[gtar100]

29. More proof that repugs cannot win without lying, cheating, or stealing.

They have no respect for the US as witnessed by how they are tearing down anything that stands in the way of privatization and the expansion of corporate rule. Patriots my ass! Repugs are as anti-American as Bin Ladin, just in their own insidious way.

[Heathen57]

30. Shortsighted Morons

No other agency or private company would do what the USPS does for the prices that they charge. Less than fifty cents to mail a letter from one coast to another is one hell of a deal.

That same letter would be around $6.00 to $8.00 depending where you are and it won't get there any faster by using UPS, FedEx, or any of the other services.

But these jokers can't see past their stuck up noses.

[ejpoeta]

31. think what life would be like without that competition in the way.

i don't think people even take the time to think about it. I think it's a great deal myself and think what would it be like with ups or fed ex without the post office as a choice.

[AtheistCrusader]

43. Uh, UPS does a pretty good job getting shit from point a to point b.

Union shop too. They simply aren't allowed to compete for first class mail by law.

[mikekohr]

65. I was In Management at UPS and worked for the USPS for 10 Years, UPS does not want rural/residential

business. In fact many parcels accepted by UPS are dropped off at local Post Offices for final destination delivery. UPS has NEVER been a full service carrier like the USPS. Example, the Hauvasupai Reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon is serviced by the USPS only. Same for many areas of Alaska and other remote areas. UPS may accept shipment of the parcel but the final delivery occurs at the hands of a Rural Letter Carrier.

Residential and rural areas are charged at higher surcharge rates at UPS. In addition UPS has zone rates which means the further the destination the higher the cost. No flat rate like the USPS is required to provide. UPS mandates excessive mandatory overtime. Do you want your mail being delivered at 7:30 at night like UPS drivers? Don't compare the two. There is no point at which UPS will ever serve the populace like the USPS.

Congress has mandated that the USPS act like a business but then draws lines in the sand that prevent it from making common sense decisions. It is Congress and the special interest groups (including small town rural America)that are to blame for much of its fiscal woes. As one Senator famously said, "It is easier to close a large military base than it is to close a small-town Post Office."

Many unprofitable Post Offices must be closed as they can be served FAR more efficiently by Rural Letter Carriers (Union members). Saturday delivery has to go. There must be cross-classification work allowed. Example: Rural Letter Carrier Associates should be allowed to do city carrier work and vis-a versa. Many Postal workers I know agree with these ideas, including one of the union stewards of our local Post Office.

[ejpoeta]

81. that's not what i meant. and i actually like ups. i am referring to pricing.

post office ships packages. in fact when i order from amazon everything used to come ups. now most comes via usps. It must be cheaper or something. Unless they have some kind of a deal. UPS or usps seems to be the norm.

[russspeakeasy]

37. Well said..

:evilgrin:

[SnakeEyes]

62. That's partly why the USPS is always in the red.

[Wednesdays]

82. Then privitize it, fergodsakes...

After all, private companies are never in the red!

[supraTruth]

97. LOL!

[BlueIdaho]

33. K&R and shout this from the roof tops! nt.

[desertrat777]

34. The Bottom Line - Once Again

Once again, we see the same tired ploys being used to separate people from their public services, their jobs, their infrastructure, ad nauseum.

The neocons - i.e. the uber rich and their corporations - have but one bottom line. Profits, with disregard for the cost to others and the planet. As such, that defines them as parasites.

Of course, if they could eliminate the USPS, it would mean that their corporations could rake in the profits. We the People would pay in the form of increased costs and less reliable delivery. The USPS has performed in a stellar fashion for two hundred years, and now it is under fire because paid-off representatives no longer represent the people, nor do they govern the country. But that is what we elected (i.e. hired) them to do.

Let's take the example of Bolivia. When corporations, acting as a front for the uber rich, caused Bolivia's water to be "privatized," Bechtel was ready to rush in and take over. The immediate result was a 300% increase in the cost of water! So much for the ploy that privatization saves the public money. It doesn't, never has, and never will, and this kind of false framing is another example of the 180 degree rule, where the neocons and their propagandists simply invert the truth and present this 180 degree falsehood as the truth. For example, the Clear Skies Act actually lowered air pollution standards, yet one would think, by its name, that it was doing the opposite of what it really sought to do.

The longer-term result of the privatization of Bolivia's water was an actual revolution, where corrupt politicians were thrown out and Bechtel was thrown out. So it appears, that in this case, the corruption backfired and the people had their say.

Thanks for the explication of the contrived "problems" with our faithful servant, the USPS.

[katty]

36. manufacture, create crisis...then privatize

no mystery to this formula.

[WinkyDink]

39. The Post Office is a Ponzi Scheme! It's a monumental FRAUD!

[Occulus]

41. Que?

[AtheistCrusader]

44. She's riffing on that dipshit, Perry.

Edit for gender, didn't check the profile first.

[supraTruth]

42. TYP. CONS!

A 2006 law mandates that the Postal Service pay health benefits 75 years into the future at a cost of $5.5 billion a year. That, according to Allison Kilkenny in today's Truth Out, puts an impossibly large burden on the agency. She writes "Congress was mandating coverage for future human beings. It was an impossible order. And strangely, a task unshared by any other government service, agency, corporation or organization within the entire United States. It was this, and not the invention of e-mail that became the Postal Service's death knell."

On top of that, because of a simple accounting error, the agency has overpaid its pension fund by $50 billion. Representative Stephen Lynch, a Democrat of Massachusetts, has introduced legislation to correct the error and balance the Post Office books. But Darrell Issa, Republican of California, has introduced another bill -- The Postal Reform Act, which could further imperil the agency's finances and its unions. Postal Union representative Chuck Zlatkin told The Nation Issa's bill would "Wisconsin" the Postal Service, and allow Congress to "rip into the contracts, close post offices without hearings -- it's basically the Postal Service Destruction Act."

http://current.com/shows/countdown/blog/complete-transcript-for-sept-9-2011

[Scruffy1]

48. The dems voted for it,too.

Originally it was HR 22 and passed with only 20 votes against and after the senate amended it was passed with a voice vote. In all fairness it did remove from the postal service the obligation of picking up veterans benefits and required to 5.5 billion to be applied to retiree health benefits.

[tcaudilllg]

52. Poison bill

[jimbo3]

66. Unforseen economic downturns

resulting in severe decline in mail volume and revenue.

[tcaudilllg]

51. CNN and MSNBC

seem to have created the "postal crisis" meme.

Or was FOX News at it first?

[supraTruth]

96. roger ailes'FIXEDnewsCORP REPEATS OVER & OVER & OVER, ANY LIE to make our United States Government

look "INCOMPETENT." The rest of the LAMEstreamCORPORTEmedia generally follow along like puppy dogs.

[senseandsensibility]

54. keep this kicked

Call your reps!

[fascisthunter]

57. Kick for the Truth!

[Quantess]

58. It's definitely overblown.

Absolutely, it's just another manufactured crisis to push for privatization.

[dogmoma56]

60. that is because the Rat Bastards want to steal it all.. like every other pension

[customerserviceguy]

61. I'm sorry

with all the Rethuglican underfunding, and outright robbery of other government pension funds, believing that somebody is overfunding the USPS pension and health funds is just too hard for me to swallow.

There are a hell of a lot of state employees out there who wish their pensions were half as well funded as USPS pension funds. And that's even if the USPS misses the next payment.

[jimbo3]

64. Overfunded.

The postal service has two tiers of employees- CERS, who are the civil servants hired before 1984, and FERS, Federal employees hired after 1984. Heres a breakdown of the overfunding-

http://www.postalreporternews.net/2010/08/18/oig-says-usps-overfunded-its-fers-retirement-obligations-by-6-8-billion/

CERS overfunded by 75 billion, according to the Office of Inspector General, and FERS overfunded by 6.8 billion.

[tropicanarose]

67. Isn't this outrageous? Its like the Rethugs are trying to take away every positive thing the govt ro

has and replace it with more free enterprise, where they will line the pockets of a few and the rest will suffer more.......I am fed up!

[glowing]

68. Why isn't the Union plastering the tv with commercial ads informing people about this?

This is such an easy, peasy thing to explain in a 30 second ad. I can't believe they would allow disinformation to continue on like this. AND why didn't the Democratic congress fix this rule when they were in the majority? It would be a perfect example for the Democrats to hold up to the American people of a Govt agency that works and competes just fine with the private market... AND why couldn't health insurance companies compete side by side at least a Public Option just like the Post Office does with FedEx and UPS? Little things like this make you scratch your head and really wonder how much the Democratic party in DC is about doing the right thing for people and Unions? They couldn't even fix something as basic as this insane funding rule to make the Post Office viable and untouched.. Now, they are literally talking about throwing 120,000 workers out the door (exactly what does that do to the unemployment numbers and the one's to go will probably be the older one's closer to retirement so that they cannot receive their full pension benefits that they deserve). As well as, talking about closing offices, making it harder for people to get to the post offices, especially if they don't have a vehicle or its a rural area and the post office is now 30 mins out of the way. AND they are talking about getting rid of Saturday services... Which means that on Monday, the postal workers will be breaking their backs taking care of 3 days worth of mail.

Its truly a sad day in America when the representatives in DC can't even get it together enough to make the Post Office function... that even our mail delivery service has become politicized over breaking their Union's backs and ruining yet another govt function for privatized gains. What happens when the Post Office is gone? Mailing anything becomes extremely expensive, unreliable, and privatized. One would think that the Politicians who enjoy bulk mail billing for their campaigns would at least try to make the Post Office work for that reason alone.

AND for God's sake, why can't even one of the Democrats get the story straight or one of our liberal media sources report on what is really happening.. AT least the Unions should be out their screaming their heads off about the BS scam job the Republicans forced on the Post Office regarding the Pensions and medical care.

[eallen]

69. Well. Except for the questionable value of moving paper about.

The digital revolution is only continuing. In short years, the notion of a government agency with a monopoly on moving first class, physical letters will seem as quaint as washing boards and button-on collars.

Everyone who wants to save the Post Office should be thinking in terms of what its next charter will be.

:hippie:

[sketchy]

74. Paper Absentee Ballots are also delivered by the Post Office

And if they're "quaint," that's fine. They are effective.
The issue of absentee ballots delivery needs to be discussed. Who else would do it as effectively?

[naaman fletcher]

79. Even if,

this is a manufactured crises, we still need to ask why I need someone to deliver a pile of junk mail to my house 6 days per week. 1 day should be enough.

[Occulus]

92. Because it's still the cheapest way for business to advertise

I sort, every workday, the very mail you're complaining about. You might think it isn't necessary, but I am in a position to intimately know just how used it actually is. I see all the advertising being delivered to my area; from the time it comes in on pallets to the time it's prepped for the final two-pass operation on the following shift that puts it all in delivery order (and I've done that part a lot, too), that mail is almost literally in my face. And I do mean all when I say "all"; just Sunday I and my coworkers finished up the one-hundred-or-so pallet collection of standard mail for delivery yesterday. Half a million pieces, easily, and probably more. That took about two solid days to get through.

While national advertisers- credit card companies, retail chains, and the like- send a large amount of presort standard mail, I can tell you that your local businesses rely heavily on the USPS as their cheapest- and perhaps only- method of advertising via the exact same method. Raising their prices or going to fewer delivery dates per week would cause many of them to close up shop, would force those that don't close to restrict the timing of their in-store promotions or sales, and in general cause havoc for businesses both local and nationwide.

Furthermore, because of the way the mail is processed- the physical machinery and software involved, not the process itself- we can only process so much mail so quickly. Remember, these are physical objects being mechanically sorted with the aid of optical character recognition, high-speed barcode readers, and the like. The belts the mail runs through move at about twelve feet per second, with the mail sandwiched between. Any faster and the machine is likely to jam up and mangle the mail. Plus, the mail has to go through such a machine several times before it is in the carrier's walk sequence, and that final run through the machine is restricted by the number of bins on each machine. We only have so much space for these and we only have so many people to run them. We can only physically sort so much at once each day; it's hard to "double up" days of mail, and impossible to "triple" it.

Eliminating delivery days will only cause problems, and not solve any.

[Better Believe It]

75. Is President Obama speaking or acting in support of the postal workers?

He had nice things to say about union workers on Labor Day.

[MrMickeysMom]

77. follow the money on pensions...

It always leads to international banking and how we have had so much money siphoned away from every state in the union.

The methodical plan is to blame the American people while stealing our money. I'm sure we have more than this Congress to blame for looking the other way while this has been going on and on and on.

[lonestarnot]

78. And you expected pigliCONs to manage anything any differently? I did not.

Privatize the PO has been their goal for decades.

[liberalla]

83. Poison pill by Denny Hastert...

one of the last things he did before leaving office.

The USPS is due a BIG refund.

[Honeycombe8]

85. Maybe no other agency bears that burden because there's no other agency like the USPS?

I mean...they don't get their $$$ from the taxpayers, like other agencies. They get it directly from people who use the mail and buy stuff and stamps from teh USPS.

I doubt it was JUST Republicans who passsed that mandate. What you mean is that it was a Republican-introduced bill, I expect.

The USPS says it's having financial difficulty. That is all I know.

[Occulus]

93. The USPS has to prefund retiree health benefits

unlike government agencies and most private businesses (and it's a legal obligation), PLUS the USPS has overpaid by tens of billions.

It's a manufactured "crisis".

Now you know MORE!

[benld74]

94. Text below is directly from said bill,,,,,,

‘‘(3)(A) The United States Postal Service shall pay
17 into such Fund—
18 ‘‘(i) $5,400,000,000, not later than September
19 30, 2007;
20 ‘‘(ii) $5,600,000,000, not later than September
21 30, 2008;
22 ‘‘(iii) $5,400,000,000, not later than September
23 30, 2009;
24 ‘‘(iv) $5,500,000,000, not later than September
25 30, 2010;
VerDate Aug 31 2005 21:43 Dec 12, 2006 Jkt 059200 PO 00000 Frm 00138 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 E:\BILLS\H6407.RDS H6407 pwalker on PRODPC60 with BILLS
139
HR 6407 RDS
1 ‘‘(v) $5,500,000,000, not later than September
2 30, 2011;
3 ‘‘(vi) $5,600,000,000, not later than September
4 30, 2012;
5 ‘‘(vii) $5,600,000,000, not later than Sep6
tember 30, 2013;
7 ‘‘(viii) $5,700,000,000, not later than Sep8
tember 30, 2014;
9 ‘‘(ix) $5,700,000,000, not later than September
10 30, 2015; and
11 ‘‘(x) $5,800,000,000, not later than September
12 30, 2016.
13 ‘‘(B) Not later than September 30, 2017, and by Sep14
tember 30 of each succeeding year, the United States
15 Postal Service shall pay into such Fund the sum of—
16 ‘‘(i) the net present value computed under para17
graph (1); and
18 ‘‘(ii) any annual installment computed under
19 paragraph (2)(B).
20 ‘‘(4) Computations under this subsection shall be
21 made consistent with the assumptions and methodology
22 used by the Office for financial reporting under sub23
chapter II of chapter 35 of title 31.
24 ‘‘(5)(A)(i) Any computation or other determination of
25 the Office under this subsection shall, upon request of the
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140
HR 6407 RDS
1 United States Postal Service, be subject to a review by
2 the Postal Regulatory Commission under this paragraph.

[Hubert Flottz]

95. The GOP is a party of losers and that's why they...

want America to fail.