Political Costs of the USPS
President Barack Obama signed a measure last week to give the U.S Postal Service $4 billion worth of breathing room for the next year. The measure just barely got through, according to some reports.
For our industry this is a good thing. It means that at least until next September mailers will be able to keep on mailing and their correspondence will keep getting delivered to every far corner of the U.S. at fixed predictable rates at a time when the industry, if not the whole economy, is still on shaky ground.
What Obama actually signed was legislation deferring an onerous $5.4 billion annual payment to a fund that covers healthcare premiums for retired postal employees. Instead the USPS only had to fork over $1.4 billion, this year leaving it with $4 billion to cover its increasingly money-losing operations.
And even this might not be enough to stave off further postal financial calamities.
It
