{"id":5431,"date":"2012-11-16T23:48:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T04:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=5431"},"modified":"2012-11-16T23:48:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-17T04:48:00","slug":"nalc-misguided-compromise-proposal-misses-the-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2012\/11\/16\/nalc-misguided-compromise-proposal-misses-the-mark\/","title":{"rendered":"NALC: Misguided compromise proposal misses the mark"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

On Thursday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), the retiring chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, called a bipartisan meeting of House and Senate leaders to discuss his alarming idea to allow the U.S. Postal Service to end Saturday mail delivery service but retain package delivery service on that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I\u2019m sure Senator Lieberman\u2019s intentions are good, his notion not only is misguided, it falls into the trap of failing to address the root cause of problems the Postal Service continues to face,\u201d NALC President Fredric Rolando said. \u201cIn fact, his proposal completely ignores the 2006 congressional mandate to pre-fund 75 years\u2019 worth of future retiree health benefits and to do so within just 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis crisis, manufactured by Congress, is what\u2019s creating on Capitol Hill a false sense of urgency to act immediately,\u201d Rolando said. \u201cThere is no argument that something must be done to solve the Postal Service\u2019s financial problems, but Lieberman\u2019s so-called compromise would eliminate 25,000 city carrier jobs and drive more business away from the Postal Service by undermining the value of our service.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president pointed to a key underlying message from USPS\u2019s financial report on Thursday for Fiscal Year 2012, which ended Sept. 30.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost $11.1 billion of the Postal Service\u2019s reported $15.9 billion loss this past fiscal year stems from the pre-funding mandate\u2014an unfair burden that no other company or government agency bears,\u201d Rolando said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, leaving aside pre-funding and other actuarial adjustments, a fraction of the overall losses\u2014$2.5 billion\u2014came from the actual delivery of mail,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s still a lot of money, but it needs to be stressed that it\u2019s about half of the $4.9 billion in losses recorded the previous year.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than charging ahead with a faulty compromise that focuses only on service cuts,\u201d the president said, \u201cCongress should take carefully measured steps to address pre-funding\u2014especially since the pre-funding account already contains more than enough cash to meet the health benefit needs of future retirees for decades to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cAddressing pre-funding would help take away the manufactured sense of urgency and allow the entire postal community\u2014employees as well as lawmakers and managers\u2014to come together to develop a forward-looking business plan to help the Postal Service succeed in the 21st century,\u201d Rolando said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), the retiring chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, called a bipartisan meeting of House and Senate leaders to discuss his alarming idea to allow the U.S. Postal Service to end Saturday mail delivery service but retain package delivery service on that day. \u201cWhile I\u2019m sure Senator […]<\/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-5431","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\/5431","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=5431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5432,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5431\/revisions\/5432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}