Can Congress take action to help the Postal Service?

At the moment, Congress faces one of several tough choices in order to cut post office expenditures and help preserve the system.

The Postal Service raises funds through postage sales and mail services, so it need not rely on taxpayer funding.

Its financial problems arise mostly from declines in first-class mail volume, and increases in wages and benefits. The widespread use of electronic forms of communication have definitely contributed to the slow decline of the post office over the last decade as well.

Last year, the service lost $2.2 billion, causing it to announce that 220,000 positions need to be eliminated by 2015. This amounts to about 30% of the current Postal Service staff.

Congress must do one or more of the following, enacting measures that would incense many postal workers if passed:

1) Excluding post office employees from federal health and retirement plans.

2) Cutting postal service on Saturdays.

3) Voiding union contracts in order to be able to lay off postal workers with more than six years of service, who are otherwise protected from arbitrary layoffs.

4) Utilizing pension surpluses to put money in the retirement benefit fund.

The problem in enacting these measures lie in the time limit Congress faces, and in the general reluctance Congress has shown so far to make critical and tough decisions before the last possible minute.

On September 30th, the Postal Service is legally mandated to make a $5.5 billion payment to pre-pay future retiree health care benefits. Therefore, Congress must come to a major decision in the coming month.

Observers think quick action is highly unlikely, as Congress will probably face staunch opposition from the postal union if benefits are taken away from workers, contracts are voided, and pensions are dipped into by the Service.

The crisis unfortunately reflects both on the U.S.’ budget problems, and on the lack of political will and political deadlock that plague the nation and prevent serious economic and political reform of any sort. One can only hope that Congress finally steps up to the plate and takes a tough stance to save the Postal Service.

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