Posted on 04/27/2012 8:21:12 AM PDT by 92nina
After refusing to pass a budget for three years, the Senate today moved a postal reform bill that edifies the upper chambers refusal to confront the nations fiscal problems. Rather than reform the postal services bloated bureaucracy, the Democrat Senate has expanded the federal carriers authority and pushed it further towards bankruptcy. Unfortunately, the already watered down Senate bill only worsened throughout the amendment process; nearly every amendment that would have made S. 1789 more like Issas Postal Reform Act failed.
ATR highlighted many of S. 1789s shortcomings in an earlier letter:
Given that over 80 percent of the Post Offices costs are labor relatedwhile FedEx and UPS spend 20-40 percent lessit is not surprising that the government entity can afford to shed 220,000 employees, according to its own estimates. Unfortunately, S. 1789 does little to right-size USPSs workforce and rein in overhead costs. Additionally, S. 1789 leaves thousands of unnecessary post offices and mail processing facilities untouched and requires Saturday delivery for at least two more years.Not accounting for declines in mail volume, and subsequent declines in revenue, the USPS finds itself left with staff, infrastructure, and benefits it can no longer support. In 2010 the USPS lost $8.5 billion. Even after cooking the books and postponing $5.5 billion in retirement payments, the USPS still lost $5.1 billion in 2011. The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste points out that in 2010, former Postmaster General John Potter predicted that the USPS would lose $238 billion over ten years should the necessary reformsabsent in the bill before the Senatefail to be implemented.
Another concern that was not alleviated through the amendment process is whether or not USPS should be able to offer new services and products in order to bring in new revenue. In the past when the USPS has faced shortfalls, the entity has attempted to offer consumers more productsinternational shipping, ties, and other eventual boondoggles. These forays into other services have consistently ended poorly. Firstly, the USPS is not equipped to deliver these products at market price, so these new products inevitably result in a loss for the USPS. Secondly, any revenue the USPS gains comes at the detriment of a private company offering the same service.
Leveraging the governments support of USPS to encroach on private businesses is bad policy and should be explicitly prohibited. Yet, the Senate bill leaves the door wide open for these types of job-killing activities.
Every day Democrats postpone meaningful USPS reform, the more difficult and painful eventual USPS restructuring will be.
Read more: http://atr.org/senate-passes-watered-down-postal-bill-a6864#ixzz1tFpJ6xXk
Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at Digg and at Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious
But does it have the windmills it needs?
What about switching its fleet of mail trucks in urban areas/areas with access to natural gas fueling stations to natural gas engines? With the price of gas, I’d bet the switch would pay for itself in a year or two and beyond that it’s all savings. It’d promote private employment and give us all a chance to see how these natural gas engines really work.
Just like everything else.
Postal service should be private.
Health and well being should be private.
Energy should be private.
Phone service should be private.
Police should be private.
Tv and Radio should be private.
Travel should be private.
Gov should create rules and not services.
Think how many people can start new businesses!!!
Should the military be private?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.