{"id":2618,"date":"2011-08-12T16:32:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-12T21:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=2618"},"modified":"2011-08-12T16:32:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-12T21:32:00","slug":"the-big-lie-about-postal-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2011\/08\/12\/the-big-lie-about-postal-bankruptcy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Lie About Postal Bankruptcy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

From NALC
\n<\/strong>8.12.2011<\/p>\n

The \u2018Big Lie\u2019 about postal \u2018bankruptcy\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yesterday, in a mandatory stand-up talk, Postal Service management all across the country told letter carriers:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were a private company, we would have already filed for bankruptcy and gone through restructuring\u2014much like major automakers did two years ago.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Service repeated this claim in a press release distributed to the nation\u2019s news media as well.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s not true. But the USPS seems to think that if it repeats this \u201cBig Lie\u201d often enough, most people\u2014and especially members of Congress\u2014will think it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s set the record straight: If the Postal Service were a private company, it would not have to file for bankruptcy because it would not be subject to a USPS-specific congressional mandate to pre-fund future retiree health benefits. As it is, it is the only federal agency required to do so: It must pre-fund these benefits some 75 years into the future on a massively accelerated schedule.<\/p>\n

This postal-only mandate, which costs the USPS $5.5 billion per year, accounts for 100 percent of the Postal Service\u2019s $20 billion in losses over the past four years. It also accounts for 100 percent of the rise in the Postal Service\u2019s debt in recent years. Without the mandate, the USPS would have been profitable over the past four years and it would have significant borrowing authority to ride out the bad economy. It would not have had to file for bankruptcy.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In fact, no private company in America is required to pre-fund future retiree health benefits, either by law or private-sector accounting standards. The $47 billion the Postal Service has deposited into its retiree health fund over the past four years would have been available for operating costs. And those companies that voluntarily do pre-fund would never have adopted a crushing schedule to pre-fund 80 percent of future retiree health costs in just 10 years. Nor would they mindlessly stick to such an onerous schedule in the middle of the worst recession in 80 years.<\/p>\n

Congress, aided and abetted by the Office of Personnel Management and the General Accountability Office, mandated the destructive pre-funding policy in 2006. The common-sense solution is obvious: Let the Postal Service use the massive surpluses in its pension plans, found by two independent audits, to cover the cost of pre-funding. Indeed, 181 members of the House\u2014from both parties\u2014have co-sponsored legislation to adopt this solution (H.R. 1351). But thanks to the dysfunctional nature of Congress, the bureaucratic blindness of OPM and the Office of Management and Budget, and the single-minded stubbornness of the Congressional Budget Office, which \u201cscores\u201d any change in the pre-funding provisions as increasing the deficit even though no taxpayer funds are involved, the Postal Service now faces a financial crisis in September when the next $5.5 billion payment is due.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t believe the \u201cBig Lie.\u201d The Postal Service is not going bankrupt. Rather, Washington politics is killing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From NALC 8.12.2011 The \u2018Big Lie\u2019 about postal \u2018bankruptcy\u2019 Yesterday, in a mandatory stand-up talk, Postal Service management all across the country told letter carriers: \u201cIf we were a private company, we would have already filed for bankruptcy and gone through restructuring\u2014much like major automakers did two years ago.\u201d The Service repeated this claim in […]<\/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-2618","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\/2618","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=2618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2621,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2618\/revisions\/2621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}