WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service lost $1.3 billion in the final three months of last year, despite a blizzard of campaign advertising for the fall political elections and a big holiday mail and shipping season.
The loss announced Friday was far less than the $3.3 billion in the comparable quarter the previous fiscal year, but still showed the effects of a continued decline in first-class mailing as customers continue to flock to the Internet for emailing, bill paying and the like.
In releasing their financial report, postal officials pleaded anew with Congress to give them the flexibility to better manage the agency — including to free it from a mandate that they prepay for expected retiree health care costs.
Considering its operations alone, the agency actually made $100 million delivering the mail — earning $17.7 billion in revenue against $17.6 billion in operating expenses. But the health care funding and some other expenses pushed it to a net loss.
“We can’t continue to operate on a precipice,” the service’s Chief Financial Officer Joe Corbett said in a conference call for reporters.
Read more at Official Wire. By Pauline Jelinek.
Please share this post with your friends and comment below. If you haven’t already, take a moment to sign up for our free newsletter above and friend us on Twitter and Facebook to get real time updates.
Follow @WestJournalism
Loading ...
So health care costs were a big contributor to the loss? Wait until ObamaCare is fully implemented (thanks Chief Justice John Roberts, you utter fool and traitor to the Constitution), the losses will only increase for everyone. This is unquestionably the worst and most damaging Administration in the history of the United States. The fools who voted and then voted again for Obama deserve to suffer the most and probably will. Maybe then they will do the right thing but I don’t hold out much hope for that. They like Bill Cosby’s comedy routine of years ago about his children who wouldn’t mind: “they are hopelessly and incurably brain damaged.”
In 2006, the President Bush signed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). Under PAEA, USPS was forced to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in an astonishing ten-year time span” — meaning that it had to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees it hasn’t even hired yet, something “that no other government or private corporation is required to do.”
In 2011, it was estimated that the Post Office would actually have a $1.5 billion surplus if PAEA was never enacted. Altering or repealing this poison pill legislation would allow the Postal Service to continue its services without being burdened by the 75 year pre-fund requirement. But that requires Congress to act.
If you want a real eye opener Google the salary, along with the benefits including the retirement program of the Postmaster General. Only in America could someone that is running a business into the ground earn that kind of compensation.
Guess next is we will have our mail sent to us via internet…. no need for Postmen any more.