Going postal has been a standing joke about the USPS for years, and few organizations evoke less sympathy. Currently the Post Office is undergoing severe financial hardship and may well go bankrupt. Like most, I assumed that was because the Internet had reduces demand for postal service, and was quite surprised to learn that has little to do with it. USPS is in trouble, because Republicans passed a law in 2006 that sabotaged the USPS. No wonder they’re going postal over there.
The White House will include a financial rescue plan for the U.S. Postal Service as part of a broader $1.5 trillion deficit reduction package due to Congress in the coming weeks, it said Tuesday.
In advance of those recommendations, the Obama administration is asking lawmakers to give the Postal Service a 90-day extension to pay billons of dollars in mandatory annual retirement payments that are due at the end of its fiscal year Sept. 30.
If approved, a delay would buy time for Congress, the White House and postal officials to draft a package of reforms for the cash-strapped delivery service, whose leader warned again Tuesday that it is teetering on the brink of financial collapse and likely to go broke by fall 2012.
"I’m operating right now with a week’s worth of cash," Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe warned senators Tuesday. The Postal Service’s weekly costs total about $1 billion, he said… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <CBS>
Of course, CBS did not include the cause of the problem. Sam Seder fills in the details how Republicans sabotaged the USPS to force the post office out of business and bust the union with Allison Kilkenny on Countdown.
That’s right. No other company is forced to pay employees’ total health care costs in advance before the employees are even born. Republicans are screaming about no big bailouts for USPS, but Issa and his co-conspirators are lying. The changes needed to fix this mess cost nothing, and Americans don’t pay a penny in taxes for postal service. Republicans just want to bust a union with 500,000 workers.
14 Responses to “Republicans Made Them Go Postal”
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The biggest “Ponzi Scheme” out there is the Republican Party. They make Amway and Madoff look like pikers………
Well said.
High fivin’ you Judi.
Let ,me get in on this!
How to bust the Postal Union? Force the Post Office to pay for medical care 75 years into the future. Once they go broke, the union goes away. Thanks Bush Republicans.
That’s it, Blues.
It seems that BOTH parties are RESPONSIBLE for this mess we are in, because they are ALL employees of corporate criminals and bankster robbers! It also goes back to slavery! they want global poverty ( except for them and their FREAK family members) I say STOP PAYING these slime balls whom are DESTROYING the country we the people finally made without slaughtering innocent people! They are PURPOSELY destroying America and with OUR TAX DOLLARS! STOP paying these FREAKS!
Welcome Kimberly. 🙂
The facts support you where Republicans are concerned, but only with some Democrats. Within the Democratic party there is a foundation of progressive legislators.
They bought all those new trucks, built many new post offices in the 1990’s and early 2000’s and pay their top management bou cou dollars and moving expenses and other luxuries….they charge an arm and a leg to ship anything. They shot themselves in their foot!
This is another way to break the union!
Welcome Kathy. 🙂
While I claim no expertise on what you suggest, I do know that in spite of these things, they would be perfectly solvent, if not for Republican sabotage.
I wonder if Donahoe knew that USPS had over funded the pension fund and pre-paid medical insurance for 75 years? He’s the top dog so he should have known that. Accepting that he did know, why would he not propose the ‘accounting tweek’ as a viable option when he went before the Senate. Door #1: Draconian measures including mass layoffs, restructured medical plan, no Saturday delivery, and close some post offices. Door #2: Bankruptcy. Door #3: ‘Accounting Tweeks’ around over funded pensions and pre-paid medical. Seems like an easy choice to me. Door #3! The next big question: how to get the plan past the Republicans. That would mean that the Republicans would have agree to revising the 2006 act and make then look like the union busting, greedy snakes they are. Given that the USPS is as American as the Pony Express, that may sit well with the public. I smell Republican chuck steak on the barbeque again!
I’n not sure about the former, but he had to know the latter. The problem with Door #3 is that it requires an act of Congress.
DON’T TAKE OUR POST OFFICES AWAY. WE NEED THEM. NOT ALL PEOPLE HAVE INTERNET OR PAY BILLS ONLINE.
Welcome Terri! 🙂
I fully agree.