{"id":1781,"date":"2010-12-12T20:12:23","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T01:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=1781"},"modified":"2010-12-12T20:12:23","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T01:12:23","slug":"napus-president-says-washington-post-editorial-misdiagnosed-the-cause-of-usps-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2010\/12\/12\/napus-president-says-washington-post-editorial-misdiagnosed-the-cause-of-usps-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"NAPUS President Says Washington Post Editorial Misdiagnosed the Cause of USPS Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a class=\"highslide\" onclick=\"return vz.expand(this)\" href=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/NAPUS.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-1782\" title=\"NAPUS\" src=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/NAPUS-150x150.gif\" alt=\"National Association of Postmasters of the United States\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Letter written by NAPUS President Robert Rapoza to Editor of Washington Post<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/12\/06\/AR2010120606342.html\" target=\"_blank\">Failure to deliver<\/a>\u201d editorial misdiagnosed the cause of the Postal Service\u2019s challenges and suggested treatment that makes matters worse.<\/p>\n<p>The $8.5 billion Postal Service loss that the editorial mentioned stems primarily from a law that foists a $5.6 billion annual payment on the USPS to prefund retiree health costs. Also, the government raised the Postal Service\u2019s payment to the workers compensation fund by $2.5 billion. Ironically, two nationally recognized actuarial firms determined that the USPS had been required to overfund its pensions by $50 billion to $75 billion.<\/p>\n<p>The Post, however, recommended that Congress extort the USPS to secure its surplus pension contributions. In part, The Post recommended weakening a statute, enabling the USPS to close \u201cunprofitable\u201d post offices. This recommendation is problematic.<\/p>\n<p>First, post office profitability is meaningless, because offices deliver and distribute mail \u2013 inherently \u201cunprofitable\u201d services. Second, many \u201cunprofitable\u201d offices serve rural communities and are the communities\u2019 sole commercial and communications access points. Third, closing all small post offices would save only 0.7 percent of the USPS\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n<p>Before cutting services, Congress should treat the \u201cmost trusted agency\u201d fairly, and the Postal Service must trim its administrative overhead.<\/p>\n<p>Robert Rapoza<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Letter written by NAPUS President Robert Rapoza to Editor of Washington Post The \u201cFailure to deliver\u201d editorial misdiagnosed the cause of the Postal Service\u2019s challenges and suggested treatment that makes matters worse. The $8.5 billion Postal Service loss that the editorial mentioned stems primarily from a law that foists a $5.6 billion annual payment on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1781"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1784,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781\/revisions\/1784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}