GAO says Post Office 'unsustainable,'
urges congressional action
Washington Times,
by
Jeff Mordock
Original Article
Posted By: Ribicon,
5/8/2020 12:58:10 AM
The United States Postal Service has lost $78 billion since 2007 and its current business model is unsustainable unless Congress intervenes, according to a scathing report Thursday by the Government Accountability Office. And the crisis could get even worse because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report said. Postmaster General Megan Brennan told Congress earlier this year that the USPS could lose as much as $13 billion in 2020 because of the virus. The GAO said the Postal Service’s financial viability has progressively worsened since it was first labeled a “high risk” for insolvency in 2009.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
MissMann 5/8/2020 1:02:14 AM (No. 404537)
It's time for mail delivery to be more like trash pickup. Once a week is more than enough for basic mail delivery. Anything you need to arrive faster, use express mail/Fedex/UPS, etc. And maybe stop losing money on delivering for Amazon.
10 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
BRDG 5/8/2020 1:03:48 AM (No. 404538)
Sell it to Amazon.... they know mare about efficiency and productivity than any government operation.
6 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
stablemoney 5/8/2020 1:08:37 AM (No. 404542)
The Post Office has been crying unsustainable every year for over 50 years that I am aware of. It has been the longest death in history, if it is that, as they always seem to be working, and well fed.
12 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Trigger2 5/8/2020 1:25:29 AM (No. 404550)
Stop the cheap postal costs for China. The same applies to non-profits and congress mailings. Charge full price for junk mail. The post office would be in the black if they did that.
16 people like this.
Any other business would have been out of business long ago. Maybe it's upper management ?
6 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Strike3 5/8/2020 1:42:53 AM (No. 404561)
Unions, government workers and top-heavy in management. A surefire way to kill any enterprise and if not for taxpayer backing this dinosaur would have succumbed years ago. Put it out of it's misery.
11 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
DVC 5/8/2020 2:20:38 AM (No. 404590)
The USPS gave way too many folks an overly generous, and unsustainable pension plan. And like all these overly generous, unfunded pension plans, it is collapsing the company.
For regular companies, what happens when the company can't pay? Well, it goes into bankruptcy and sheds debt which it cannot pay....which often the largest debt is the unfunded portion of their pension plans. So, the retirees perceive that "we was screwed"....and that is sorta-kinda true, but in reality, if you accept an unfunded pension plan....you are just a fool being fooled, and that pension plan is made out of air and unicorn farts.
Unless a pension plan has real, legitimate invested DOLLARS behind it, it is a worthless lie. And how many look closely at the actual funding of their pension plan? If it is over 1% who even pay the slightest attention to it, I'll be shocked. Folks just believe the stories they are told by the union - "we got you a GREAT pension plan".....which the never bother to realize is NOT sustainable, because there is NO WAY to pay for it. Unless employees pay into the pension plan, and the employer also pays in, at an appropriate rate over the years, to build up a REAL invested nest egg, the plan is smoke and mirrors. And the USPS
plan is just like this, $50 billion short of paying their pension costs. That isn't chump change.
The SS system is another creation of smoke and mirrors. There is NO "lock box" filled with "investments". Of course, the SS folks will say.."No, no that is just a lie. We have that money invested in government bonds, the safest thing possible." and they could probably even show them to you.
What is a government bond? It is a piece of paper which you buy with REAL MONEY, which says at some future time, the real money will be returned to you by the bond holder. OK, cool, but how does a government which the tax revenues only cover about 50% of annual spending pay for these IOUs (oops, sorry, BONDS)? Yep, they CAN'T. The took the money in, put another piece of fancy paper (IOU/Bond) in a filing cabinet and SPENT the "SS tax money" THAT YEAR. Some went out to pay current SS folks, the rest to whatever the hell they waste money on.
I don't know much about the USPS pension plan, but you can bet it is another one of these unfunded pension plans which they "intended" to fund out of "current earnings".....OOPS, the pension liabilities is
about to exceed the current earnings? Oh, shucky darns....whose fault? Some guy who promised that and who died 25 or 30 years ago. You can go pee on his grave, but that won't fill up your bank account.
And you can bet that Uncle Sugar will be asked to bail out the "poor postal workers, screwed by their company"...sorta, but they were very, very complicit in that screwing, too.
I have a company pension. I always assumed it would be gone down this rathole, and that SS would also be gone down the same rathole. I planned to provide my OWN retirement, independent of the pension and SS. So far, getting a small pension and SS....so we are very comfortable with those and our investments, because we really weren't sure that they would be there. And they could collapse tomorrow, AFAIK.
8 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
DVC 5/8/2020 2:21:36 AM (No. 404592)
#2, efficiency has little to do with it. They have promises to pay an unsustainable pension. I am sure Amazon has NO pension plan, just a 401K that you can save for your OWN retirement.
8 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Uno_Thatguy 5/8/2020 2:30:14 AM (No. 404599)
The Postal Services are mandated by the US Constitution. When its assets and incomes were taken over by the GAO it no longer remained an independent agency. PO funds were taken over by the GAO who claimed they knew better how to run it. From that day it ran in the red because its the profits were dumped into the general fund.
Much of what #4 describes makes sense. The fact is that the PO has responsibilities far beyond what the FEDEX and UPS can cover. Both of these agencies depend on the PO to deliver much of their stuff because neither of the them can come close to the coverage and the costs that are now mandated by Congress. FEDEX and UPS both threw up their hands and backed away when asked if they could take over the PO's services. Both said they would have to charge several times what the PO gets to cover EVERY business and residence in America.
Take control away from Congress and run it like a business and it could again become profitable.
7 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
ronniethek 5/8/2020 2:53:59 AM (No. 404617)
Make Amazon pay its fair share reflectingvosts. Why are we subsidizing Bezos?
14 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
mamabear 5/8/2020 2:57:33 AM (No. 404620)
It is hard for me to understand how an entity which services every American home, organization and business from which every American is forced to buy can be losing money. I get the losses due to the rise in email. But how many cracks are there for money to slip through? I hope the new postmaster digs deep into the books to find out exactly why they are running in the red and finds ways / changes to correct it.
6 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
DCGIRL 5/8/2020 6:49:00 AM (No. 404678)
What is not common knowledge is that the postal service has a health insurance plan that is identical to the one that I purchase. The difference is I pay 12 times more each monthly than they do. The government pays a huge amount each month for each postal employee's health care. This is devastating. Because of incompetent union negotiations, the postal service will pay people to standby daily for huge sums of money. TONS of WASTE in the postal system. They have gotten away with it for too long. I say, let them compete with UPS and Fedex. In order for them to survive, they will need to be completely reorganized and managed differently to cut all expenses. Most of the prior Union negotiations will need to go.
6 people like this.
It’s a Union Shop with fully funded pensions (am money in the bank today) which is obscene! Postal carriers aren’t the problem...it’s the officce workers! Completely political and disfunctional! Let them go broke! No loss! Start over with a model that is private and works!
3 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
3XALADY 5/8/2020 7:27:43 AM (No. 404714)
A neighbor in Florida lived in a very expensive home, had very expensive vehicles and motorcycles (not American made) and spent his time shopping on the internet. Owner of several Rolex watches. He had been retired from the PO since he was in his 50's, had been in management. He had been collecting this pension for around 25 years. He is just one retiree.
6 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
MickTurn 5/8/2020 8:24:43 AM (No. 404817)
Well Bozo, for starters, stop doing Amazon's deliveries at a LOSS!
We need to take the post office and make it a REAL business, not a govt. handout machine!
5 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
Bur Oak 5/8/2020 12:18:48 PM (No. 405100)
It would be cheaper to just give everyone a FAX machine and a phone line and call it a post office.
1 person likes this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
24tea@Mag 5/8/2020 2:09:48 PM (No. 405230)
Someone within the postal service needs to take a look at how mail/packages are routed. I live in PA, but when I track orders they are in PA, but being re-routed to WV before being delivered to the final destination in PA. When was the last time anyone reviewed/updated the delivery system of the USPS?
4 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
or gate 5/8/2020 2:18:09 PM (No. 405235)
If the guv would quit sucking money out of the PO to blow, they would have money.
logic 101
2 people like this.
OK, why does Brennan want to retire at age 50-something? No doubt, it would be a cushy federal goobermint retirement.
Something wrong with this picture.
1 person likes this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
or gate 5/8/2020 7:19:20 PM (No. 405436)
My take on the situation:
The PO had 10000 employees and 9000 are supervisors.
One person to do the books
4 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
JimBob 5/9/2020 5:22:32 AM (No. 405626)
So the Post Office is fiscally unsustainable and rapidly going deeper and deeper into a Sea of Red Ink.
How is that different from the REST of the Federal Government?
What is the Federal National Debt these days?
$23,000,000,000,000 or so?
They'll get to Avogadro's Number one day!
(Avogadro's Number.....the number of Atoms in a 'Mole' of material...... 6.02 x 10 to the 23'rd power, ..... IF I recall correctly!
let's see, that's about........ 602 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 )
Yep, they're well on their way!
0 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
judy 5/9/2020 5:35:07 AM (No. 405630)
I've been asking for years...what kind of deal did Obama give Amazon??? UPS & Fed Ex deliver to the PO ..the PO delivers to your home???Super weird???
1 person likes this.
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Keep charging more for stamps while providing counter service that's maddeningly slow if not downright rude, do nothing to address a looming pension disaster that's been brewing for decades, then blame the Chinavirus. Why not?