Delivering Insanity

The recent news that - once again - the U.S. Postal Service continues to have major money problems didn't surprise us. It's a story that has upset our entire staff for a variety of reasons, for some time now.

For many years now, it's been obvious that the U.S. Postal Service, like virtually every postal system around the world, has had its previous business model threatened by the reach and growth of the internet. This past year has been especially hard on U.S.P.S., as pressures from many directions have come to a head - especially from those in politics who'd either prefer to privatize the whole system or would prefer to use the postal service budget money elsewhere.

The fact is, if the postal service were allowed to implement some of the ideas that many in the postal system have suggested for years, there would be no problem at all.

As the radio and tv commercials you may have seen and heard, correctly point out, one of the Postal Service's biggest financial liabilities is their pension fund. Thanks to a 2005 change by Congress, the postal service pension fund is required to be fully-funded at all times, unlike virtually every other pension fund for either private businesses or public unions.

For the U.S.P.S., that adds up to roughly $5.5 billion annually - and it means the Postal Service pension fund is currently way overfunded. Even by conservative measures, the postal service pension fund currently has more than $75 billion more than it needs, something the Postal Service has been trying to change for several years now.

The U.S. Postal service hasn't been blind to the internet, either. More than once over the last decade, proposals have been presented or floated which would have allowed the Postal Service to follow in the footsteps of Deutsche Post, the German federal postal system.

In Germany, many years ago, they saw that physical mail volume was decreasing, so - like any smart business - they attempted to broaden their potential market. Deutsche Post gained the right to act as a small-scale banking service, developed a service to sell long-distance phone cards, and worked out deals to act as a payment service for bills from many different companies, including utilities, phones, and internet providers. They even took their delivery services overseas, through DHL, which Deutsche Post owns.

All of these would be great options for the U.S. Postal Service as well - if only they were allowed by Congress to make changes of this nature.

Unfortunately, as a constitutionally mandated but semi-autonomous arm of the government, whenever the Postal Service wants to make a change of virtually any kind, they have to go through extensive Congressional wrangling. As Congress has become increasingly paralyzed by partisanship and inaction, even the simplest measures have gotten hopelessly tied up in petty politics and bureaucracy.

Instead of standing up and boldly stating what needs to be done - as President Obama did in Kansas on Tuesday - the U.S. Postal Service and its management has surrendered, proposing massive cuts to services, massive cuts to postal service jobs, ending next-day delivery, and ending Saturday delivery as well.

Not only would those measures devastate rural communities from coast to coast, they will also likely harm the long-term success of the Postal Service -- which, as a constitutionally mandated government organization, can't go away, and can't be privatized without significant Congressional action.

Meanwhile, postal workers are deeply unsure of their future, and terrified of the present, but they still keep on delivering presents, letters, and packages on time, and at prices no private company can or would ever match, to places that Fed Ex and UPS simply don't go.

From our perspective, the actual workers of the U.S.P.S. seem to be the only people who are delivering any sanity into this subject.

Sadly, it is Congress and the Postal Service executives who are in control of the future of the very folks who do all the heavy lifting at the U.S.P.S.