“The United States Postal Service said it has signed a deal with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut costs at the agency.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told congressional leaders in a letter that he had signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s DOGE to cut jobs and spending at the agency that has long lost money.”
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“The postmaster general said his agency plans to reduce its workforce by 10,000 workers within the next month through a voluntary early retirement program.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/postal-signs-cost-cutting-deal-211908642.html
“A first-class stamp costs more than ever, and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) recently received a $10 billion loan from the federal government as part of a major pandemic relief package passed in 2020.
Now, Congress might force taxpayers to cover the cost of retired postal workers’ health care—something for which the supposedly self-financing agency has always been responsible.
With little fanfare and broad bipartisan support, the House of Representatives voted earlier this week to pass the Postal Relief Act of 2022. The bill sweeps retired postal workers into the already strained Medicare system, whether they want to join or not, and excuses the USPS of having to self-fund health benefits for its retirees.”
“Retirement costs are also the main reason the Government Accountability Office declared, in a May 2020 report relying on data gathered before the pandemic hit, that the Postal Service’s current business model was “not financially sustainable.””
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“All private pension systems must prefund future benefits. Indeed, this is a wise thing for businesses to do if they wish to remain solvent. The unique situation for the USPS is that those requirements also apply to its retiree health care benefit plan. Private sector companies aren’t required to do that because they could, theoretically, eliminate those benefits at any time. The USPS, however, would not be able to do that without an act of Congress—and so prefunding is not only financially sound, but politically prudent.
Despite those obvious long-term drawbacks, the American Postal Workers Union and at least 270 members of Congress support a plan to switch the USPS to a so-called “pay-as-you-go” pension system. If passed, the USPS Fairness Act would allow the USPS to use current workers’ contributions to pay benefits to current retirees, rather than requiring that those dollars go into an investment fund to cover the cost of the current workers’ eventual retirement.”
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“instead of addressing structural issues in the current retirement system”
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“it will certainly create bigger problems later on.”
“President Donald Trump has alleged that the more widespread use of mail-in voting is ripe for fraud, but there is no evidence to support that claim; Trump himself has voted by mail as recently as March of this year. Democrats, meanwhile, believe DeJoy is engaged in a nefarious plot to disenfranchise Americans, even though the expected uptick in mail volume around the election would fall well within the post office’s usual capabilities.
It’s good to see that DeJoy is trying to lower the temperature surrounding this debate. He told the committee on Friday that more “dramatic changes” to mail service will be postponed until after the election.
That makes sense. But make no mistake about it: Dramatic changes are necessary. The post office, DeJoy said, is facing the prospect of a $9 billion shortfall this year alone—a huge total for an agency that is supposed to be self-sustaining.”