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Post by the Scribe on Aug 17, 2020 8:30:35 GMT
9/13/11 9:00am Read time: 4 minutes 69 comments
More Details Emerge In Republican Assault On Post Office And Postal Unions
crooksandliars.com/kenneth-quinnell/more-details-emerge-republican-as
The Republican plans to weaken the United States Postal Service are starting to get more and more attention, including Sam Seder's Majority Report, Thom Hartmann, Nicole Sandler's radio show and Allison Kilkenny's brilliant Truthout
By Kenneth Quinnell
The Republican plans to weaken the United States Postal Service are starting to get more and more attention, including Sam Seder's Majority Report, Thom Hartmann, Nicole Sandler's radio show and Allison Kilkenny's brilliant Truthout article:
It was only a few years ago that the USPS was considered not only stable, but thriving. The biggest volume in pieces of mail handled by the Postal Service in its 236-year history was in 2006. The second and third busiest years were in 2005 and 2007, respectively. But it was two events: one crafted during the Bush years and another supervised by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, that would cripple this once great institution.
Perhaps it was its booming history that first drew Congress' attention to the Postal Service in 2006 when it passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA), which mandated that the Postal Service would have to fully fund retiree health benefits for future retirees. That's right. Congress was demanding universal health care coverage.
But it even went beyond that. Congress was mandating coverage for future human beings.
"It's almost hard to comprehend what they're talking about, but basically they said that the Postal Service would have to fully fund future retirees' health benefits for the next 75 years and they would have to do it within a ten-year window," says Chuck Zlatkin, political director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union.
It was an impossible order, and strangely, a task unshared by any other government service, agency, corporation or organization within the United States. The act meant that every September 30th, the USPS had to cough up $5.5 billion to the Treasury for the pre-funding of future retirees' health benefits, meaning the Postal Service pays for employees 75 years into the future. The USPS is funding the retirement packages of people who haven't even been born yet.
We keep being told that email and the Internet have killed the Postal Service and it's simply not true. Adjusting for the economic downturn, it appears the USPS is busier now than it ever has been before. E-commerce has been a huge boost as all the items people purchase online have to get to people's homes and the cheapest way to do that is still through the Postal Service.
The more details that we find out about this law, the PAEA, the worse it sounds. It passed on a voice vote. Why weren't any Democrats or progressives in Congress asking questions as to the validity of this bill? Why didn't they do their homework on its effects?
And what about Postmaster General Tom Donahoe, who has been getting a lot of time on television in recent weeks, arguing for massive cuts to the USPS?
What empower meant was to starve the Postal Service and its union. Since that day, Donahoe has abdicated his responsibility as the postmaster general, according to Zlatkin. The APWU's collective bargaining agreements in the past have included layoff protections, which Donahoe immediately offered up as sacrifice to his Republican masters when he asked to bypass worker protection so he might obliterate 220,000 career positions from the workforce by 2015.
"All he's trying to do is appease that committee. He's violated a contract he's signed. He's violated labor law. From my understanding, by going to Congress and having them change the laws to change our contracts, he's violating the Constitution of the United States."
In fact, Zlatkin says his local union chapter is so disillusioned with the postmaster's behavior that they're putting out a press release to call for his resignation or termination. "He is either a well-meaning incompetent or a duplicitous front man for the people who want to privatize the postal service," says Zlatkin.
And, again, for those who don't recognize why this is so important, the Postal Service is a vital cog in the American economy and is constitutionally mandated. It particularly benefits the poor:
But as Marcy Wheeler explains, there are still tons of people who need the USPS's services: poorer people, people using a post office box, rural people who live outside delivery areas, eBay-type entrepreneurs, immigrants sending care packages to people from their country of origin and nonprofits.
"It's part of the class war and it's against the poor and it's a class war against working people," says Zlatkin. Of the 34 post offices the USPS is considering closing in New York City, 17 are in the Bronx. The South Bronx district ranks as the poorest Congressional district in America. |
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 17, 2020 8:33:59 GMT
Now it makes sense why the RepubliCONServatives have been trying to destroy the post office. It was just another link in their voter suppression tactics and to kill a union favorable to Democrats.How the right wing destroyed the post officeCasey: The most insane law by Congress, ever?roanoke.com/news/dan_casey/casey-the-most-insane-law-by-congress-ever/article_3c33d5a1-5fd3-5c01-b5bb-5c75046f48f4.html
Hundreds of Roanoke postal workers' jobs will be eliminated.
Dan Casey Jul 5, 2014
Most Americans have never heard of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. The mind-numbing title alone sounds like it could put a hardcore insomniac to sleep. The truth is, it’s one of the most insane laws Congress ever enacted.
It’s past time for people in the Roanoke Valley to wake up about it. Because that legislation, sponsored by a (former) Virginia congressman, has real potential to kill 300 to 400 blue-collar jobs here in the Star City. Those have a combined payroll of more than $1 million annually.
My colleagues Matt Chittum and Zach Crizer wrote about those coming job cuts in last week’s paper. The U.S. Postal Service announced a consolidation plan that would move mail-processing operations now in Roanoke to Greensboro, North Carolina. Roanoke is one of 82 such operations around the country that would be closed.
Those cuts could slow your mail, because a cross-town birthday card may have to go to Greensboro and back before it’s delivered. Among the hundreds of jobs on the line are those held by 120 military veterans, 80 of whom are disabled.
Closing operations here may also cost bulk mailers the discount they now get for doing business in a city with a mail-processing center. Maybe those companies will go away, too. That’s even more jobs.
This is necessary, we’ve been told, because the postal service is deeply in the red to the tune of $46 billion in accumulated debt. It is indeed facing a financial crisis. But almost the entire reason for the crisis is that insane 2006 law.
It requires the self-supporting U.S. Postal Service, which receives not one dime in taxpayer subsidies, to fully fund its retirees’ health benefits for 75 years into the future. It also requires that money be set aside over a 10-year period, at a rate of more than $5 billion per year.
That means the postal service is now paying for the future health care of retirees it has not yet hired, and who in some cases have not yet been born. No other public or private company in the nation bears any kind of financial burden like that.
Even worse, none of that money is truly being set aside. Instead, it is going directly into the U.S. government’s general fund, and it’s being spent on current government operations. The set-aside is a theoretical accounting gimmick. Those future retirement liabilities are actually being added to the national debt.
Who sponsored this cockamamie legislation? It was former Rep. Tom Davis, a Republican from northern Virginia who served in Congress from 1995 until 2008. He’s now a Washington lobbyist for Deloitte, a huge accounting and consulting company.
Last week I reached out to Davis to learn how and why this happened. One thing you should know is that the bill was bipartisan. The cosponsors were Reps. Henry Waxman, D- Calif., Danny Davis D-Ill. and John McHugh, R-New York.
The surprising thing I heard from Davis was that he agrees the future-funding retirement provision was crazy. That was never in the original legislation, he said.
Instead, the 90-page bill made a bunch of bureaucratic changes, few of which the average American would give a hoot about. It also placed a temporary moratorium on rate increases and established a less cumbersome system under which rates could be increased moving forward.
Somewhat ironically, the bill was intended to help the Postal Service be more competitive for the future, Davis said. But late in the game, the Bush White House threatened to veto it unless Congress added the future-funding-for-retirees provision.
Congress went along because at the time it seemed like it was a better option than having the entire bill defeated, Davis said.
“That was the cost of getting the bill through,” Davis said. The Bush administration used the revenue it gained to help balance the budget.
Coincidentally, mail volumes peaked in 2006. Then the 2008 recession caused a further drop. The postal service has never really recovered from that, Davis said. Electronic communication has eaten into first-class mail, which has continued to decline.
So there is the back story on how legislation designed to save the U.S. Postal Service became a law that is actually killing it.
Davis said the postal service would still be losing money today even without the future-funding provisions. That’s debatable though. Carlton Cooper, president of Roanoke’s Local 482 of the American Postal Workers Union, told me that the postal service was $311 million in the black in 2013, aside from the onerous retirement funding.
Congress has known about this problem for at least five years, and it’s been twiddling its thumbs while both small post offices and large mail processing centers have been shuttered. In the past 20 years, Cooper said, the postal service has eliminated 211,000 jobs. Now it’s striking closer to home.
On Thursday, I reached out to Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County. In a statement emailed from his office, he said, “The debate in Congress on postal reform has been long and heated. It is not about whether reform is needed, but how it would best be accomplished and how any savings from this reform would be best utilized. There are several ideas, and I am considering the impacts of these proposals.”
You know what that sounds like: more thumb-twiddling.
There is one simple reform that could end the postal service’s financial crisis tomorrow: remove that future-funding provision. That would add more than $5 billion annually to the postal service balance sheet.
It would be like dousing a blazing house that also has some leaky pipes. Putting that fire down would allow the homeowner to fix the plumbing issues, rather than letting the whole place go up in smoke.
Unfortunately, the politicians on Capitol Hill are so politically divided right now that they couldn’t agree on a resolution establishing our first president’s last name. FYI, it is Washington. He was a statesman — unlike the people in Congress, who are fiddling while the postal service burns.
Cooper asked me to put out a call to readers for them to contact Goodlatte’s office, as well as those of Reps. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, and Robert Hurt, R-Pittsylvania County.
Give them a call. Perhaps it will do some good. But don’t get your hopes too high.
Congress has known about this problem for five years. And they’re considering ideas? And evaluating impacts? Come on.
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 17, 2020 8:38:07 GMT
Postal Accountability and Enhancement Acten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_Enhancement_Act
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (H.R. 6407) by Tom Davis (R-Virginia) on December 7, 2006
Committee consideration by House Government Reform Committee
Passed the House on December 8, 2006 (voice vote)
Passed the Senate on December 9, 2006 (unanimous consent)
Signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 20, 2006
The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) is a United States federal statute enacted by the 109th United States Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 20, 2006.[1]
The bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives by Tom Davis, a Republican from Virginia, and cosponsored by Republican John M. McHugh of New York and Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Danny K. Davis of Illinois.[2] The bill was approved during the lame duck session of the 109th Congress, and approved without objection via voice vote.[3]
PAEA was the first major overhaul of the United States Postal Service (USPS) since 1970.[4] It reorganized the Postal Rate Commission, compelled the USPS to pay in advance for the health and retirement benefits of all of its employees for at least 50 years,[3] and stipulated that the price of postage could not increase faster than the rate of inflation.[5][6] It also mandated the USPS to deliver six days of the week.[7] According to Tom Davis, the Bush administration threatened to veto the legislation unless they added the provision regarding funding the employee benefits in advance with the objective of using that money to reduce the federal deficit.[2] When he signed the bill on December 20, 2006, Bush issued a signing statement that says that the government can open mail under emergency conditions, though Waxman asserted that the government cannot do this without a search warrant.[8]
Between 2007 and 2016, the USPS lost $62.4 billion; the inspector general of the USPS estimated that $54.8 billion of that was due to prefunding retiree benefits.[9] By the end of 2019, the USPS had $160.9 billion in debt, due to growth of the Internet, the Great Recession, and prepaying for employee benefits as stipulated in PAEA.[10] Mail volume decreased from 97 billion to 68 billion items from 2006 to 2012. The employee benefits cost the USPS about $5.5 billion per year;[11] USPS began defaulting on this payment in 2012.[9] The COVID-19 pandemic further reduced income due to decreased demand in 2020.[10]
According to Bloomberg, prefunding the health benefits of retirees "is a requirement that no other entity, private or public, has to make".[12] Columnist Dan Casey wrote in a July 2014 op-ed in The Roanoke Times that the PAEA is "one of the most insane laws Congress ever enacted".[2] Bill Pascrell, a Democratic House member from New Jersey, said in 2019 that it was rushed through Congress without due consideration, and referred to it as "one of the worst pieces of legislation Congress has passed in a generation".[3] In May 2020, a segment on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver examined the law and its impact on the USPS, demonstrating that it has contributed to its debt.[5]
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 17, 2020 8:45:30 GMT
USPS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
7,163,543 views•May 10, 2020
LastWeekTonight
8.3M subscribers
As the U.S. Postal Service faces financial catastrophe, John Oliver discusses why the service is so important, what brought it to this point, and what we can do to help.
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 17, 2020 8:49:09 GMT
Voting by Mail: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
7,446,058 views•May 31, 2020
LastWeekTonight
8.3M subscribers
With the 2020 presidential election nearing and a pandemic in full swing, John Oliver discusses why voting by mail is necessary, the fearmongering surrounding it, and why we need to start planning for November right now.
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