{"id":2411,"date":"2011-07-01T22:31:32","date_gmt":"2011-07-02T03:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=2411"},"modified":"2011-07-01T22:31:32","modified_gmt":"2011-07-02T03:31:32","slug":"nalc-says-rep-dennis-ross-misfires-on-the-myths-and-the-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2011\/07\/01\/nalc-says-rep-dennis-ross-misfires-on-the-myths-and-the-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"NALC Says Rep. Dennis Ross Misfires on the Myths and the Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL), who chairs the House Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and District of Columbia, recently posted on his website a floor statement entitled Postal Service \u201cOverpayment\u201d \u2013 Myth v. Fact, where he tried to dispel three alleged myths about the Postal Service\u2019s pensions and retiree health benefits pre-funding burden.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, his \u201cfacts\u201d are far from factual and do more to confuse and mislead members of Congress than clarify the issues as the latest debate on postal reform unfolds. As a public service, the Activist Alert blog is happy to clear up the confusion.<\/p>\n

Alleged Myth 1: \u201cThe Postal Service has overpaid by $50-$75 billion into the Civil Service Retirement System and Congress owes this money back.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Real Facts:<\/strong> We are asking the Office of Personnel Management to recognize the true postal surplus in CSRS. And we are asking Congress to let us use these surplus funds to cover the cost of funding future retiree health benefits, a corporate best-practice in the private sector under ERISA guidelines. This is what H.R. 1351<\/a>, a bill co-sponsored by 159 members of Congress from both parties, sets out to accomplish.<\/p>\n

Alleged Myth 2: \u201cThe Postal Service is unfairly saddled with an annual $5.5 billion retiree health care prefunding payment that is required of no other federal agency. If only the prefunding requirement were eliminated the Postal Service would be profitable again.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Real Facts:<\/strong> Once again, Rep. Ross twists the alleged myth before addressing it. Supporters of H.R. 1351 are not saying that its passage will necessarily restore the Postal Service to profitability forever. What we are saying is that, without this unfair burden, we would have been profitable over the past four years (2007-2010) since pre-funding costs of $21 billion explain 100 percent of the $20 billion losses recorded over this period.<\/p>\n

No other agency pre-funds retiree health benefits\u2014over any length of time. Nor do the legislative and judicial branches. Nor do most private companies.<\/p>\n

Supporters of H.R. 1351 are not trying to stop pre-funding future retiree health benefits. Instead, we want to transfer the $55 billion surplus in the CSRS postal account (using fair methods endorsed by the Postal Regulatory Commission) into the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund, which already has $42.7 billion in it. That would be enough to totally pre-fund the Postal Service\u2019s future retiree health obligations.<\/p>\n

NALC does not deny that the Postal Service faces significant challenges; like many private industries, the USPS must adapt to the Internet economy.<\/p>\n

Alleged Myth 3: \u201cThe USPS has a FERS surplus of $6.9 billion that should be immediately returned.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Real Facts:<\/strong> Rep. Ross makes a good point: The surplus in the postal Federal Employees Retirement System account may be a function of temporarily low interest rates. However, that does not mean that it would be inappropriate to allow the USPS to use the surplus in its FERS account to address its short-term financial challenges.<\/p>\n

Rep. Ross compares the USPS to other federal agencies. He says that \u201cother federal agencies with temporary surpluses are not being granted refunds for \u2018overpayments\u2019 as a result of these fluctuating balances.\u201d That is true. But other federal agencies are not choking on a grossly unfair obligation to pre-fund 75 years\u2019 worth of retiree health benefits over a 10-year period.<\/p>\n

The Postal Service and its employees will continue to do their part\u2014our part\u2014to adapt to serve the changing needs of the American economy. Would it be too much to ask Congress to do the same?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL), who chairs the House Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and District of Columbia, recently posted on his website a floor statement entitled Postal Service \u201cOverpayment\u201d \u2013 Myth v. Fact, where he tried to dispel three alleged myths about the Postal Service\u2019s pensions and retiree health benefits pre-funding burden. Unfortunately, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nalc-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411","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=2411"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2414,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions\/2414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}