The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.
Yeah, and the odds of that are pretty much next to zero. Add postal carriers and mail sorters to the list of evil, immoral government employees and retirees that are the bane of America's existence and must be made to pay. Meanwhile, let's eliminate corporate taxes!
Seriously, Republicans now have the opportunity to extract even more concessions from middle-class America in order to transfer untold billions to the top of the pyramid. But the problem is all those welfare queens delivering your mail, right?
[Postmaster General] Donahoe’s hope is to cut $20 billion of the $75 billion in annual costs by 2015. To do that, he wants to close many post offices and slash the number of sorting facilities to 200 from 500 and trim the agency’s work force by 220,000 people, from its current 653,000. (A decade ago, the agency employed nearly 900,000.)
Wait, we've already cut 250,000 postal workers over the last decade and now we have to cut 220,000 more? You're telling me the problem in America is that we can't afford a postal service? Seriously? It's almost like massive tax cuts are a problem in the long run or something. Here's the kicker:
Meanwhile, Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee, says the pension proposals would amount to an unjustifiable bailout that would not solve the agency’s underlying problems. He is pushing a bill that would create an emergency oversight board that could order huge cost-cutting and void the postal service’s contracts — a proposal that not just the unions, but Senators Carper and Collins oppose.
That's the backbreaker, right there. If that's allowed to pass, then Republicans will use the oversight board to void all government worker provisions and fire millions in an effort to privatize and monetize as many government services as possible. It'll also mean the end of organized labor in America, for good.
And that's the real memo to be delivered. PS, $75 billion a year, the entire bill for the Postal Service, is roughly one quarter of the average yearly cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last nine years.
But what we really need is more tax cuts.
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