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Comment by mfer | Hacker News Reader

The USPS has been getting money from taxes to offset the debt they run each year. For many years now they have been in the red.

Fortune wrote about it back in 2015[1] and you can read the 2018 financial results[2].

Some tax money goes to the USPS.

[1] https://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/ [2] https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2018/pr18_093....

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To offset the debt that Congress has forced on them by requiring them to pre-fund pensions and healthcare cost for employees who don't exist yet. And Congress sets postage rates as well, so USPS can't raise rates in order to pay down their congressionally-mandated debt without getting approval from Congress. And the requests to raise rates are often denied.

Congress sets domestic letter mail rates.

Everything else is a free-for-all.

I’m sure Amazon’s direct delivery system also stuck a knife in USPS.

That first article is severely stretching the definition of "getting money". Virtually all of the alleged $18B is attributed to the law that gives the USPS jurisdiction over your mailbox.

The second just reflects Congress's attempts to deliberately hobble the USPS in 2006 by requiring them to suddenly pre-fund their pension obligations.

https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you-assume

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-04/congre...

> The law requires the Postal Service, which receives no taxpayer subsidies, to prefund its retirees' health benefits up to the year 2056. This is a $5 billion per year cost; it is a requirement that no other entity, private or public, has to make.

> hobble the USPS in 2006 by requiring them to suddenly pre-fund their pension obligations

Maybe it's a flawed methodology (arguable), but being fiscally responsible about pensions is something that should be encouraged. In California pension liabilities are out of control and at impractical levels, causing all sorts of havoc and manipulation (corruption). https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/2018/12/07/governor-jerry-...

Fully funding pensions out to 50 years in the future goes beyond "fiscally responsible". Consider that the nominal working lifetime of an employee is only 47 years (18 - 65) -- they're being required to fund pensions for hypothetical employees who are still in high school.

Postal workers' retirement age is 55-57 (https://about.usps.com/manuals/elm/html/elmc5_058.htm).

Oh, ha -- so then change "high school" for "grade school". Either way, it seems ridiculous to require a pension to be fully funded years before its beneficiary is even hired.

Talking about people in high school who will end up in public service is irrelevant.

Having more money in the bank than you take out for a car loan is fiscally responsible. Not exactly. More than. That's WITHOUT your holdings (bank account balance) being subject to market forces, which is a compelling reason.

If fiscal responsibility were the goal, they'd have required the other federal agencies to do the same. That this specifically targets one of the few agencies ripe for potential privatization is... suspicious. Even if it made fiscal sense, the sudden switch is problematic.

> If fiscal responsibility were the goal, they'd have required the other federal agencies to do the same

That's not how the Federal government works. It's a LARGE organization that sometimes have people with philosophies align. There is no chance that the military would prefund pensions. I think that, toward the initiative to make the USPS free of subsidy now and in the future, it made perfect sense. The USPS workers used to talk about everything moving electronic, but that's not happening in our lifetime. 50 years is just "the near future", respectively.

OK, let's reword that a bit.

Why didn't the same Congressional Republicans who pushed through the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 push for similar changes to how other federal agencies fund their pensions?

Why won't the military pre-fund pensions? Why shouldn't they do the same "fiscally responsible" thing for veterans benefits?

> Why didn't the same Congressional Republicans who pushed through the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 push for similar changes to how other federal agencies fund their pensions?

I don't know. Probably something to do with the majority of the US population liking the USPS but not everyone wanting more military spending.

> Why shouldn't they do the same "fiscally responsible" thing for veterans benefits?

Probably because congress would never approve another 20%+ on top of the current military spending and still get all their pork in. These topics are an amalgam of political decisions as well as leadership decisions.

I vote for more accountability, reliability and term limits in government. That's rarely a topic from either major party.

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