Say Anything Blog

Brought to you by the same people who want to make your health care more efficient for you:

The quasi-government agency announced this week that it lost $3.8 billion in the most recent fiscal year, which ended September 30th. It also delivered less mail - 26 billion fewer pieces less, a nearly 13 percent drop from the previous year. The bad news follows losses totaling $7.8 billion in 2007 and 2008.

The Postal Service, as it is quick to point out, is legally prohibited from taking tax dollars. But in order to stay afloat, the agency has been actively borrowing from the U.S. Treasury: At last count, according to Postal Service spokeswoman Yvonne Yoerger, it owes the government $10.2 billion.

Federal law dictates that the Postal Service can borrow up to $3 billion per year - but the debt cannot grow beyond $15 billion. That means that while the agency, which had revenues of $68.1 billion last year, could potentially borrow another $3 billion in 2010, it will soon no longer be able to legally borrow billions from the government.

Calling the Post Office a “quasi-government” is entirely misleading.  Post Office policy is set by the federal government.  Post Office employees are federal employees, enrolled in the government worker unions and entitled to all the lavish pay and benefits government workers receive.

The Post Office is perhaps the most visible and obvious manifestation of government inefficiency and incompetence available in America.  The Post Office is getting its clock cleaned by the private sector.

And yet still some people in this country want to put the government in charge of health care.  Unbelievable.

On a related note, I think we should disband the Post Office.  It’s unnecessary.  There are plenty of private sector parcel and letter delivery services available to Americans.  Email and things like e-billing have made letters all but obsolete.  So why not close up the Post Office and stop the bleeding now?

The answer, unfortunately, isn’t that we have to keep the Post Office because we need the Post Office.  The answer is that far too many unionized federal employees would lose their jobs.  And the unions, who have been losing ground in the private sector for decades now, just can’t afford to take that sort of a blow to their membership rolls.

So, much like putting the auto industry on taxpayer life support so that the United Auto Workers can continue to feast on their host body, we’ll keep the USPS alive so that the unionized federal employees can keep their jobs.

Too big to fail.