The Problem with Postage

Dear Editor,

I read with great interest your “Stamp out bad policy” article on your opinion page in your October 20, 2011 issue of High Plains Reader. I couldn’t agree more with your thought process, and the frightening and dangerous direction that USPS Management as well as the US Congress are taking. This includes North Dakota’s own US Representative Rick Berg who has sided with Rep. Dan Issa from California on HR2309, which in essence will completely destroy the US Postal Service as we know it. There are many web pages devoted to that bill should you choose to research it, so I will not bore you with the details. Another bill that has traction in the US House is HR1351, with some 226 co-sponsors, which Rep. Issa is not allowing to come to a floor vote in the US House.

There are a few facts about the USPS that I thought you as well as your readers might find interesting. Some four years ago there was a bill that was passed into law by the US Congress which required the USPS to prefund a 75 year pension liability over a 10 year period, to the tune of $5-6 Billion per year. What that means is that they are prefunding the liability for future employees that are not even yet born. It is important to recognize that no other private company or government agency is required to fund their liability in such a fashion.

If it were not for this requirement, the USPS would have shown a net profit in the neighborhood of $650+ million over the past four years, during the worst economic slowdown since the great depression, as well as a dramatic decline in mail volume due in part to electronic communications via the internet. If it is not bad enough that Congress burdened the Service with that, consider the following as well; two separate audits have shown that the USPS has additionally overfunded their pension liabilities an additional $50-75 billion, as OPM has miscalculated their pension liability in the past. If the service was to be allowed to have their own money back, their would clearly be no financial crisis that is currently existing.

Worse yet, is the myth that the Republican’s in Congress are perpetuating by suggesting or by saying outright that the service is looking for some sort of taxpayer bailout. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, with the current attitude from the American Taxpayer about the recent past bailouts they believe it increases their chances to completely dismantle the service to the American mailing public. I hope you will do some additional research into the issues I have offered up to you and provide a follow-up article in your paper sometime in the near future so that the real facts of exactly what is going on with the USPS becomes known to everyone that reads your publication.

Thank you for your time in regards to this issue.

Steven Stegmiller
Mandan ND