The U.S. Post Office - Yet Another Bail Out?

The United States Post Office recently announced that it lost $3.8 billion in the most recent fiscal year, which ended September 30th. It also delivered less mail - 26 billion fewer pieces less, a nearly 13 percent drop from the previous year. The bad news follows losses totaling $7.8 billion in 2007 and 2008.

The Postal Service, as it is quick to point out, is legally prohibited from taking tax dollars. But in order to stay afloat, the agency has been actively borrowing from the U.S. Treasury: At last count, according to Postal Service spokeswoman Yvonne Yoerger, it owes the government $10.2 billion.

Federal law dictates that the Postal Service can borrow up to $3 billion per year - but the debt cannot grow beyond $15 billion. That means that while the agency, which had revenues of $68.1 billion last year, could potentially borrow another $3 billion in 2010, it will soon no longer be able to legally borrow billions from the government.

Now any manager with a modicum of business operations savvy would look at this situation and decide that immediate changes have to be made far beyond the easy decision to simply raise rates in order to avoid reaching that point where it is legally prohibited from “borrowing” additional billions of taxpayer dollars from the Treasury Department.  If our Congress had one wit of a visionary thought process, the Post Office might not be fighting the likes of FedEx and UPS today!

Unfortunately, as a government agency, the Post Office must depend on the “business operations savvy” possessed by those members of Congress.

Illinois Democratic Rep. Danny Davis, a member of the Congressional subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service (and, until recently, its chairman), admitted that the agency "is between a rock and a hard place."

When asked what Congress can do about it Davis went on to suggest…

"It's just not generating the money that you need in order to keep operating, we’ve bailed out a lot of things, and I think the Postal Service is probably as important in one sense as some of the other places where we have put public money...I'm not afraid of spending public money to keep money flowing."

Note to Congress - Your cavalier attitude towards spending public money, make that throwing bad money after bad money, is one of the primary reasons our economy is in the toilet today!

Another bail-out? You have got to be kidding me!

I cringe when I think of what will happen when his fellow democrats much lauded health plan goes into the deficit tank (which it inevitably will) should it be passed into law. We will all be bailing that monstrosity out with our wallets also!

Grow up! Set aside your petty self interest, concerns about your next election, the cash flowing into your individual offices from lobbyists and other self interest groups and start acting like responsible elected representatives of the people that you are now only pretending to be.

Stop attempting to avoid personal responsibility by constantly chanting the mantra of your far left base that the problem was caused by a previous administration. The American people really don’t give a tinker’s damn whose fault it is! They want to know who is going to fix the problem without additional pillage of our wallets!

If there is a problem, work together to fix it or step aside and allow those who are capable of actually representing those who elected you to fix it!

Peter J. Mahon