It is great for governments to run responsible budgets, but this was such a unique constraint, it seems designed to strangle the USPS.
"Contrary to statements made by some employee groups and other stakeholders, PAEA did not require USPS to prefund 75 years of retiree health benefits" https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-13-112.pdf
Also the 2022 Postal Service Reform Act eliminated the prefunding and ~$57 billion of overdue payments, but USPS finances were still dogshit afterwards: USPS revenue was $80 billion and expenses were $89 billion in FY2024
Health benefits, not pensions. And in 2022 this requirement was eliminated by a reform bill.
If you fully fund the pensions before privatization, you can simultaneously claim that privatization is necessary (look! they're running out of money!) and radically reduce costs once you do privatize (all the pensions are pre-paid, so you can stop contributing to the fund and extract profits for a few decades before you have problems).
This zip code subscription is part of the same plan: Get people used to paying for data from the USPS so it has an additional income stream after privatization.
Which is to say "fund their pension plans."
https://www.congress.gov/109/plaws/publ435/PLAW-109publ435.p...
Page 55 discusses setting money aside for retiree healthcare benefits:
>Not later than June 30, 2007, and by June 30 of each succeeding year, the Office shall compute the net present value of the future payments required under section 8906(g)(2)(A) and attributable to the service of Postal Service employees during the most recently ended fiscal year.
"Net Present Value" is accrued, i.e. benefits owed to current and past employees.
It makes sense to require an organization to set aside money it promised to pay someone...otherwise organizations would just go around paying people today with future taxpayers' money (which is what governments literally do).
Page 53 discusses the same for defined benefit pensions. All of the present values are of accrued benefits, not projected benefits.
However, I do suspect this was a clever way to handicap the USPS specifically, since it did not apply to any other governments such as state/county/city.
https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...
> The Trump Task Force acknowledged that without the costs imposed by the Post-Retirement Health Care Mandate, USPS would today be profitable on an operating basis.
Like when you buy food you like instead of the cheapest calories, this can make financial sense, because you value the preferred food more than the additional cost.
At around $20 a household projected loss for 2027, you wouldn't have to try very hard to do better than dismissing discussion of the value it does or doesn't bring.
It doesn't make financial sense because Congress has capped how much the garbage manufacturers have to pay.