In 2006, the Republican-led Congress passed an unnecessary law requiring the United States Postal Service to prefund its pension benefits for 75 years through a $5.5 billion annual payment. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA) is theonly one of its kind for a government agency. On August 1st of this year, the Post Office will likely default for the first time in its history on its 2011 pension payment. If Congress does not act, it will also default on its ...

The Senate today voted 62-37 for a bill that Sen. Bernie Sanders helped craft to modernize the U.S. Postal Service, save tens of thousands of jobs and spare rural post offices and scores of mail sorting plants threatened with closure.

Sanders (I-Vt.) said a processing center at White River Junction, Vt., would remain open and 15 rural Vermont post offices are likely to win reprieves under the Senate-passed measure that now goes to the House.

"This comprehensive postal reform legislation will preserve vitally important rural post offices and mail processing plants," Sanders said. "It also would give the Postal Service the flexibility that it needs to raise additional revenue in the years to come by offering innovative new products and services in the digital age.

"There is no question that the Postal Service needs to become more entrepreneurial to meet the changing needs of the digital revolution, but the answer is not to make mail delivery slower. The answer is not to radically downsize the Postal Service. The answer is not to eliminate over 200,000 jobs in the midst of a terrible recession. The answer is not to devastate rural communities by closing their post offices,' Sanders added.

The bill includes provisions to keep overnight delivery standards for regional areas for at least three years. It would also prevent the Postal Service from eliminating Saturday mail delivery for two years and make it much more difficult for Saturday mail delivery to end after the two-year ban. It creates a commission Sanders suggested to come up with ways for the Postal Service to become more entrepreneurial as it adjusts to mail volume changes caused by e-mail and the Internet. Financial pressure on the Postal Service would be relieved by reducing obligations to pay for future and current retiree health benefits by some $5.5 billion a year.

The bill also includes a Sanders-backed provision that would prevent rural post ...

It is fashionable to think of the postal service as an antiquated relic of a different era in the same way that all right-thinking people regarded standard 30-year fixed rate mortgages as old-fashioned at the peak of the housing bubble. Many of the same people who assured us that we could effectively manage risk through mortgage securitization are now anxious to hand the postal service a death sentence.

Death, or at least a near-death experience, is the likely outcome of S.1789, the bill to downsize the Postal Service that the Senate is scheduled to vote on Tuesday night. The bill would end Saturday delivery and also raise the target delivery time from 1-2 days to 2-3 days.

The idea is that people won't generally care if a letter takes three days rather than two to reach its destination. While that is probably true, this will certainly increase the frequency with which a letter takes a week or more to reach its destination, and people do care about and remember these instances. This additional delay is likely to seriously reduce the standing of the Postal Service in most people's eyes, leading to a further erosion of business.

The certain effect of this bill is to cut 100,000 jobs over the next three years. This is somewhat better than the 200,000 job loss that would result from a bill being pushed by Representative Darrell Issa and the House Republicans, but any final bill is likely to end up somewhere in the middle. If we assume 150,000 lost jobs, that is equivalent to more than 5 weeks of job growth at the March rate.

Or, to take another comparison in the news, the Postal Service would be eliminating about 20 times as many jobs as would be created by the Keystone ...

Picture this: You're driving down the road one rainy day as someone bearing an uncanny resemblance to Mitt Romney approaches you from the other direction in a Cadillac. One of you hydroplanes and there's a collision.

After both of you have confirmed that nobody's hurt - and that the dog and his carrier are still securely fastened to the roof - you call your insurance companies. Soon the claims adjusters show up in their little cars - you know, the ones with the insurance company logo on the door. (I know that doesn't happen in real life. This is a story.)

Your claims adjuster punches some figures into an electronic device, then smiles and says "You're all set! The check will be mailed out tomorrow." So far, so good.

But then you overhear the other driver arguing with his adjuster: "What do you mean, my claim is rejected! The headlight is cracked. On a car like this that's going to run me six grand, easy! Why won't you guys honor my claim? I paid my premiums just like everybody else."

"I'm sorry, sir," the adjuster replies. "At your income level you're not entitled to file a claim. But we sure do thank you for all those payments. Keep 'em coming - and have a good day!"

If that scenario doesn't make sense to you, why do it for Social Security?

And yet that's exactly what conservatives and their media enablers keep proposing. They insist that Social Security beneficiaries should be submitted to a "means test" before they can receive the benefits they've paid for all their lives. They're pushing the idea for three reasons: The first is to convince people that Social Security isn't really a social insurance program, or that they've earned their benefits. They'd rather have us think that it's a generous government "entitlement" we don't deserve. The second is to add another costly bureaucratic ...

What does 50 cents buy these days? Not a cuppa joe, a pack of gum or a newspaper. But you can get a steal of deal for a 50-cent piece: a first-class stamp. Plus a nickel in change.

Each day, six days a week, letter carriers traverse 4 million miles toting an average of 563 million pieces of mail, reaching the very doorsteps of our individual homes and workplaces in every single community in America. From the gated enclaves and penthouses of the uber-wealthy to the inner-city ghettos and rural colonias of America's poorest families, the U.S. Postal Service literally delivers. All for 45 cents. The USPS is an unmatched bargain, a civic treasure, a genuine public good that links all people and communities into one nation.

So, naturally, it must be destroyed.

For the past several months, the laissez-fairyland blogosphere, assorted corporate front groups, a howling pack of congressional right-wingers and a bunch of lazy mass media sources have been pounding out a steadily rising drumbeat to warn that our postal service faces impending doom. It's "broke," they exclaim; USPS "nears collapse"; it's "a full-blown financial crisis!"

These gloomsayers claim the national mail agency is bogged down with too many overpaid workers and costly brick-and-mortar facilities, so it can't keep up with the instant messaging of Internet services and such nimble corporate competitors as FedEx. Thus, say these contrivers of their own ...

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow may have stopped the Pony Express, but the nation’s oldest and second largest employer is now under attack.  Claiming the Postal Service is bankrupt, critics are pushing legislation that would defuse the postal crisis by breaking the backs  of the postal workers’ unions and mandating widespread layoffs.  But the “crisis” is an artificial one, created by Congress itself.  

In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA), which forced the USPS to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees, many of whom hadn’t even been hired yet.  Over a mere 10 year period, the USPS was required to prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years, something no other government or private corporation is required to do.  As consumer advocate Ralph Nader observed, if PAEA had never been enacted, USPS would now be facing a $1.5 billion surplus.     

The USPS is a profitable, self-funded venture that is not supported by the taxpayers.  It is funded with postage stamps—one of the last vestiges of government-issued money.  Stamps are fungible and can be traded at par; and they are backed, not by mere government “fiat,” but by labor.  One stamp will buy the labor to transport your letter 3000 miles. 

The USPS is one of the few businesses the government is ...

Talk in recent weeks of post office closings and the elimination of Saturday mail delivery has shifted to a more dire prospect: The entire U.S. Postal Service could go out of business within a year.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told a Senate hearing Tuesday that the postal service is running out of money and could go into default as soon as next month unless Congress acts.

"Without legislative change this year, the Postal Service faces default," Donahoe told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

If the Postal Service is forced to make its required $5.5 billion annual payment to the federal health care benefit plan, it will exhaust its $15 billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury and trigger a default. John Berry, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, told the panel that the White House would ask Congress to grant the Postal Service a 90-day extension on the health care payment.

But that's only the first step. Donahoe said the Postal Service, which is on track to lose $10 billion this year, must take additional, drastic measures to avoid shutting down and is seeking Congress' blessing to cut back delivery, close thousands of mostly rural post offices, consolidate processing centers and eliminate at least 120,000 jobs.

"Short-term, stopgap measures will not help," Donahoe said. "These are aggressive steps, and they are necessary."

A shutdown of the Postal Service would deal a staggering blow to the economy. With more than 500,000 employees, it's the second-largest employer in the country behind Wal-Mart. It supports millions of other jobs in related industries, such as newspaper and magazine publishers, and paper and printing companies, businesses that would be crippled without it.

"That is the last thing our struggling economy needs and the last thing our country needs," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut ...

Yesterday I walked into my local post office to mail a few boxes of books. Cathy, our postmaster, looked exhausted.

“Is it happening?”

“Looks like it.”

For years now, our beloved West Fulton Post Office has been a tenuous neighbor. West Fulton was once a bustling community. Less than 100 years ago, it was called Sapbush Hollow, home to two hotels, a community theater, and a few shops. Eventually we were annexed into the next town, and we lost our name, too. The hotels no longer exist; nor do the shops. But we still had our community identity, even if the name was changed. And we still had our post office.

Then Cathy received official word that we are “being studied for closure,” along with 3,653 other post offices across the country (many in rural communities like ours), as part of a major restructuring of the cash-strapped U.S. Postal service. Rumor has it that “being studied for closure” is a joke—that it simply means your post office is done.

“I feel like I’m losing a member of my family,” Cathy said. She started to cry. So did I.