Ray From Cleveland
Diamond Member
- Aug 16, 2015
- 97,215
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Yes, I do....Is there any Agency, of the US Govt, that is suppose to run a profit? Or can run at a profit??? Heck no!!!! The govt is not a business.There is no justifiable reason to mess with the USPS....z e r o. Makes zero sense. Don't try to spin this.
So.....it should just continue to run at a loss indefinitely?
Why do you expect it, from this constitutionally mandated agency?
You do know that money is not an unlimited reource even though Rumps spends it like it is, right?
But the postal service problems are man made, induced...due to the way a 2006 Bill, forces them to fund employee pensions, out 75 years.... No company does such a thing as fund employee pensions of an e.employee not born or hired yet....
Google it, it shows what is happening that makes them appear to be not profitable.
Here's what I found:
The rise of the internet tanked the volume of first-class mail in circulation, which peaked in 2001 and has dropped every year since. Costs, on the other hand, haven’t gone down.
"We now estimate that the COVID-19 pandemic will increase the Postal Service’s net operating loss by more than $22 billion dollars over the next 18 months, and by over $54 billion dollars over the longer term," Brennan said.
The 2006 law also established a fund for Postal Service retiree health benefits. It required prepayment of those benefits according to a 50-year schedule, starting with 10 years of statutorily prescribed payments of roughly $5 billion from 2007 to 2017.
Previously, the service funded the benefits on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The act was passed by a Republican-led Congress. But it dealt with retiree health benefits, not pensions, said David Partenheimer, a spokesman for the Postal Service.
There’s also some confusion over whether the Postal Service was forced to prepay benefits "for 75 years," as the Facebook post said. The language of the law doesn’t mention 75 years, and Partenheimer said the Postal Service has not used that timeframe to describe the requirement.
In 2012, the Government Accountability Office said the act "did not require USPS to prefund 75 years of retiree health benefits over a 10-year period" but that the "payments would be projected to fund the liability over a period in excess of 50 years, from 2007 through 2056 and beyond."
But Jim Campbell, a private attorney and an expert on postal service laws, said the 2006 law also freed the Postal Service of a prior obligation to cover pension costs for military service its employees completed before joining the Postal Service.
A 2009 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said that shift relieved the Postal Service of a $27 billion cost. Campbell said that when the 2006 law was enacted, it was expected that relief from prior costs would "more or less completely offset the new obligation."
Our ruling:
A Facebook post said: "The Postal Service is not losing money because of Amazon. It’s losing money because in 2006, the Republican-led Congress passed a law forcing it to prepay its pensions for 75 years, which no other corporation does … Without this law, the Postal Service would be turning a profit."
The Postal Service isn’t losing money from its deal with Amazon. But the 2006 law requiring the pre-funding of health benefits for future retirees — not pensions — has put a financial strain on the Postal Service and hurt its ability to turn a profit in some recent years.
However, the Postal Service has more financial problems than just the requirements of the law.
We rate this statement Half True.
PolitiFact - Widespread Facebook post blames 2006 law for US Postal Service’s financial woes
As Washington scrambled to prop up businesses stung by the impact of COVID-19, President Donald Trump reportedly threate
www.politifact.com