September 6, PBS Newshour’s Gwen Ifill interviewed U.S. postmaster general, Patrick Donahoe, and Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers. They both pointed out that the U.S. Congress is holding back on money earned by the USPS, and that was a primary reason the Postal Service is in trouble.
FREDRIC ROLANDO: “I’m here to tell you that the Postal Service is not broke. The Postal Service just needs access to its own money. And Congress needs to get busy and give them that access.”
“The $20 billion-plus dollars that you read about in losses is nothing more than a congressional mandate that requires the Postal Service, required the Postal Service to take all of their cash and put it into a pre-funding account.”
“The Postal Service actually has somewhere between $50 billion and $125 billion in their other funds that is not taxpayer money. They haven’t used a dime of taxpayer money in over 30 years! And the Congress just needs to act responsibly and quickly to give them access to that — those funds.”
PATRICK DONAHOE: “Fred is exactly right around the issues that we have faced in the last few years.”
“In that same time, we have been required [by Congress] to prepay employee retirement funding.”
GWEN IFILL: “What does Congress have to do with that? When you say that Congress needs to make changes to get you access to this cash, what can Congress do?”
PATRICK DONAHOE: “There are two proposals on the table, the one Fred referred to, where we would get money back. The other proposal is the Postal Service taking over our own retirement system, operate it just like a private business. And we would no longer need that pre-funding.”
“…we have overpaid [forced by Congress] into our other retirement fund $6.9 billion. We want all that money back right now.”
FREDRIC ROLANDO: “What Congress needs to do is give the Postal Service access to, like I said, between $50 billion and $125 billion…”
“There’s $50 billion to $75 billion in surplus pension funds. There’s about $42 billion in the future retiree health benefit funds, again, all postal funds, no taxpayer money involved.”
“…this is just cash money that the Postal Service needs access to. We’re not looking to in any way diminish what needs to be done for future pensions or future retirees. It’s just that you don’t have to do 75 years worth of pre-funding in a 10-year period. You could re-amortize what needs to be done.”
“…because any business wouldn’t put $20 billion of cash into future pre-funding, nor would they leave $50 billion to $75 billion of pension surplus in that account, when they’re going through the transition that the Postal Service is going through right now.”
“If Congress doesn’t act, the postal industry, about nine million jobs are in danger…”
PATRICK DONAHOE: “We will be out of cash next August. That’s the issue.”
The United States Postal Service does not make money off taxpayers, they are solely funded by the postage they charge (prices are controlled by Congress, not the USPS), and other products they sell. The cuts being made to the USPS will have no affect on U.S. government debt.