On April 12 Trump signed an order creating a federal task force to propose structural reforms to the United States Postal Service, often considered the most popular federal agency in public opinion polls. After only ten weeks the task force, comprised of Trump officials, concluded: “Prepare [USPS] for future conversion from a Government agency into a privately held corporation.”
There are 640,000 postal workers and letter carriers. They work from 31,585 local post offices, they handle 150 billion pieces of mail a year, and they deliver our mail in a timely and efficient manner.
Is the Post Office in bad shape? Yeah, it is, thanks to the Republicans. in 2006 President Bush and congressional Republicans enacted an “enhancement” provision requiring the USPS to pre-fund the health and pension benefits for all Post Office retirees 75 years in advance. That means the USPS must pay now for the retirement benefits of future employees, including those not yet born. This adds $6.9 billion a year to the Post Office budget.
Having saddled the USPS with this cost, the privatizers point out that the agency is losing money. Of course it is. It was planned that way.
If that arbitrary requirement was removed, the U.S.P.S. would be in the black. I am amazed at the length to which ideologues will go to implement their ideology, no matter how much it hurts our country.
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