It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Sure, you pay your own way, but when you lose $15.9 BILLION in one operating year, who closes the gap? The federal government doesn’t give direct subsidies to the Post Office anymore, but somebody has to lend them the money to continue to operate. The delivery of mail needs to be privatized, so that market forces can determine what it costs to deliver first-class mail, and what sort of benefits will be received by the people who deliver it.
The head of the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service said the agency must be allowed to ease the terms of prepayments into a retiree health-care fund and eliminate general mail delivery on Saturday.
Patrick Donahoe told “CBS This Morning” the agency isn’t asking Congress for money.
He said, “I think most people don’t realize, we’re 100 percent self-sufficient. We pay our own way.” But the postal chief notes the agency is losing $15.9 billion this year.
Donahoe says the post office needs to refinance retirement health fund payments to $1 billion a year instead of $5 billion.
He said the Postal Service would continue package delivery on Saturday and keep post offices open. In this scenario, he says the agency could be $8 billion in the black each year.
Of course – just forestall all those obligations until some later date, and show a profit in the short run. That fixes everything.