"With cash running perilously low, two legally required payments for future postal retirees' health benefits — $5.5 billion due Wednesday, and another $5.6 billion due in September — will be left unpaid, the mail agency said Monday. Postal officials said they also are studying whether they may need to delay other obligations. In the coming months, a $1.5 billion payment is due to the Labor Department for workers compensation, which for now it expects to make, as well as millions in interest payments to the Treasury."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/79130.html?hp=r17

My how things change. I myself can't remember the last time I mailed a letter or bill.

THE USPS employs some 500K people but expects to lose $21.3 billion by 2016. SHould the Gov step back into the mire and take over the USPS again?
Offer it to UPS or FedEx or both?
Let it go bankrupt?

Congress would need to vote on any solution.

I say let it go bankrupt.

I could be wrong but I'm right 99% of the time

Obama will have another "stimulus" and give them $1 trillion dollars and say he helped the economy. All the Obama Zombies will love it.

Time to start scaling back in this area, IMO. Close half of the post offices and cut back to 3 deliveries a week (MWF). It's easy enough to do business online and that will only grow to become the norm. A town of 2-3 thousand people doesn't need it's own post office. It seems like more than half the shit being delivered is junk mail or advertisements anyway. Alot of the stuff the postal system does isn't really critical, IMO, and can be accomplished electronically.

MWF for regular delivery is a good idea, but I don't know how much of the PO's budget is made up of delivery people. If you cut them back to 3-day part timers, is the rest of the postal service infrastructure moving? As in the post offices themselves, transportation of mail, regional centers, etc?

That's nothing. Corporate pensions for the S&P 500 are underfunded by 355 billion dollars. They just got a pass on funding their pensions.

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2012/07/09/2930892/new-law-gives-us-companies-a-break.html

True, most of the mail I get is junk/unsolicited garbage.

Lloydster Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> I say let it go bankrupt.


Right, because that will really solve the problem. Not to mention all the headaches and issues that will ensue if the USPS goes away.

We can all agree that electronic mail/bills are the future. But whoever said that that the USPS should even be profitable in the first place? There's no profitability in buying an Air Force Jet, keeping grandma on Medicare, improving a highway, etc...

Think it through, if the USPS goes bankrupt, and (to the GOPs wet dream) mail is privatized, then guess what happens? Letters cost $1.50 to mail. Oh and I'm sure a lot of other "pricing structures".

Or we can skip to the chase and raise letter prices TOMMORROW.

Which should it be???

res Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Or we can skip to the chase and raise letter
> prices TOMMORROW.
>
> Which should it be???


Let's ask Tom Morrow about it. He usually has a good perspective.

The Post Office has a union, Obama will bail them out

All the mail generated by the federal and state gov.'s is sent through the USPS,,,

And last time I checked, the USPS are the only people allowed to put something in your mail box,,

ALso the USPS is vital for national security interests,,,this country has become far to vulnerable to a massive cyber attack from an enemy state (like china), to let what could be the only option available for written communication and document delivery go away,,,

The USPS may not seem necessary to cubicle dwellers who live on their computers, but in the rest of society it is,,,

Hatemotor Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ALso the USPS is vital for national security
> interests,,,this country has become far to
> vulnerable to a massive cyber attack from an enemy
> state (like china).

Interesting take on it, in light of the whole anthrax mail attacks in 2001.

The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act required the post office to prepay 75 years of pension funding in a decade, putting it on the path to insolvency.

Zvee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act
> required the post office to prepay 75 years of
> pension funding in a decade, putting it on the
> path to insolvency.

True, courtesy of The Honorable J. Dennis Hastert (R IL), Speaker of the House for the 109th House of Representatives -- those rascally Republicans who saddled the Postal Service with this requirement, despite its quasi-governmental status and mandate to operate as a business. Even with the huge decline in 1st class mail, USPS would actually be in pretty good shape, if it wasn't being forced to pre-fund future health costs.

According to a neighbor (recently retired USPS management), the Postal Service could still keep its head above water, if it was allowed to make cost saving changes to its operations, namely eliminating Saturday delivery and closing nearly 4,000 underused Post Offices in rural parts of the country. What's stopping them? Why, none other than the 112th House of Representatives, The Honorable John Boehner (R OH), presiding. Their motto: "We'll work hard to cut government, even when it isn't, and only as long as it affects your constituents and not ours".

Nova_Native Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Zvee Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement
> Act
> > required the post office to prepay 75 years of
> > pension funding in a decade, putting it on the
> > path to insolvency.
>
> True, courtesy of The Honorable J. Dennis Hastert
> (R IL), Speaker of the House for the 109th House
> of Representatives -- those rascally Republicans
> who saddled the Postal Service with this
> requirement, despite its quasi-governmental status
> and mandate to operate as a business. Even with
> the huge decline in 1st class mail, USPS would
> actually be in pretty good shape, if it wasn't
> being forced to pre-fund future health costs.
>
> According to a neighbor (recently retired USPS
> management), the Postal Service could still keep
> its head above water, if it was allowed to make
> cost saving changes to its operations, namely
> eliminating Saturday delivery and closing nearly
> 4,000 underused Post Offices in rural parts of the
> country. What's stopping them? Why, none other
> than the 112th House of Representatives, The
> Honorable John Boehner (R OH), presiding. Their
> motto: "We'll work hard to cut government, even
> when it isn't, and only as long as it affects your
> constituents and not ours".


Sure, they'd be in great shape. And approaching $70 billion in unfunded health benefit plan obligations.

Prior to the 'prepayment' they were operating on a pay-as-you-go basis for their health benefit plan. The funding requirement is a 'catch-up' intended to reduce unfunded obligations that they'd already run up (which taxpayers are on the hook for). Even after 4 years of the prepayments, at the end of 2010 they still were underfunded by about $50 billion. After all of the payments which end in 2016, they still will only have paid about $16 billion toward the reduction and will have about $33 billion in unfunded obligations remaining.

For purposes of comparison, the estimated underfunding of ALL of the S&P 500 combined is estimated at about $335 billion ($1.68 trillion in obligations and assets of $1.32 trillion).

The 75 years prepayment claim is false. What they've done is put the benefit plan on a standard actuarial schedule that spans a 75 year period in order to include current retirees, current employees who will be retiring, and future hiring to maintain its workforce on a rolling basis. That is, the plan needs to be adequately funded to cover all of its retirees and current and anticipated workforce on a revolving basis. You can't for example blow the whole wad to cover retirees and have nothing left for anyone else.

The Post Office's main financial problem is that it has about 575,000 employees that they maintain on a revolving basis with some 300,000 of those expected to retire by 2020 to join however many 100,000s of existing retirees are out there, all with generous benefits.

Did someone in the congress want to put the death knell on the postal service by passing the legislation to require the overfunidng of the pension plans

perhaps someone with stock ownership in ups or fed ex?

I heard Obama wants to model the government run health care after the post office.