Nine months from now, Californians will go to the polls and take the first step in the election of our next representatives. Because of redistricting, some new names will appear and some old ones will be absent. In this series of reports, OC180NEWS provides some comments on current issues from those who would like to represent us.
In the preparation of articles in this series, OC180NEWS will request comments from the relevant politicians /candidates depending on the issue. For federal issues, such as the U.S. Postal Service, we will always contact current U.S. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Loretta Sanchez, plus would be representatives Gary Delong, Alan Lowenthal, and Steven Kuykendall. These later three are all running for California’s new 47th Congressional District, which includes, among other areas, Long Beach, Los Alamitos and Rossmoor. We will not include current Rep. Ed Royce because he is not running in a West OC district.
At OC180NEWS we believe the responsiveness of these politicians to our inquiries will say something about their attitude, arrogance, and general responsiveness to those they want to represent. In reading this series of articles, if one of their comments is not presented, it is because they were too busy, unwilling, or unable, to tell their constituents what they think about important current issues.
The failing financial health of the US Postal Service has been in the news lately because of a speech made by the Postmaster General on Tuesday. In an appearance Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Postmaster General/CEO Patrick R. Donahoe said “Failure to act [to fix the USPS] could be catastrophic. The most recent financial results continue to be grim.”
The USPS operates in a sort of no-man’s-land between a governmental agency and a private corporation. The agency does not get funds from the U.S. Government general fund and must rely on revenues generated through sales of stamps and other related items. But, there are many aspects of its operations, which a private company would control, but are subject to the will of congress. So the USPS is not allowed, for example, to drop Saturday mail delivery without permission from congress, where a company like UPS, could stop providing a service whenever they choose.
Donahoe summarized the situation at USPS as follows:
“The Postal Service ended Quarter III of fiscal year 2011 (April 1 – June 30) with a net loss of $3.1 billion. Net losses for the nine months which ended June 30 amount to $5.7 billion and we are currently projecting a net loss of up to $10 billion by the end of this fiscal year, depending on interest rates.
“Total mail volume is expected to decline by 2.0 percent, to approximately 167 billion pieces, when compared to last year. This is being driven largely by continued and accelerated drops in First-Class Mail, historically the Postal Service’s core product.
“By the end of this fiscal year, on September 30, the Postal Service will reach its statutory $15 billion borrowing limit. We are committed to paying our employees and our suppliers first, but without changes to the law, we will be unable to maintain the aggressive Retiree Health Benefits (RHB) pre-funding schedule set forth in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA).
Without legislative change this year, the Postal Service faces default, as available liquidity at the end of this month will be insufficient to meet our financial obligations.”
And, it just gets worse from there. So, we asked our federal politicians (Reps. Rohrabacher and Sanchez, plus congressional candidates Delong, Lowenthal, and Kuykendall) what they would do about this problem. Here we present their responses, in their own words, unedited, complete, and without spin.
First, to Congresswoman Sanchez:
“The Postal Service in Orange County provides critical services for families and seniors,” Sanchez told OC180NEWS. “Total savings from the closures of thousands of United States post offices would not appropriately compensate for the serious hardships which would be faced by people all across the country. Instead of slashing services, the Postal Service should correct the pension overpayment problem, remove arbitrary regulations requiring retirement prefunding, and look for innovative new ways to raise revenues.”
Next, to congressional candidate Gary Delong:
“The U.S. Postal Service should take advantage of new technology and completely re-evaluate the way it delivers service,” Delong told OC180NEWS. “In today’s economic environment, the Post Office needs to eliminate it’s deficit and operate with a balanced budget.”
Finally, to congressional candidate Kuykendall:
“It’s very unfortunate that the United States Postal Service, which has been a national institution since 1775 may be gone by the end of the year,” Kuykendall told us. “If the Federal Government does not take smart, effective, immediate action the Postal Service could close — causing over half a million workers to be unemployed. The United States Post Office is the second largest employer in the United States after Wal-Mart — and losing thousands of jobs would be a huge blow to this already fragile economy. The Postal Service has been an integral part of many American communities over the years. Substantial improvements to what is basically a large integrated distribution system are needed to bring their services and revenue in line. But the reality is nobody foresaw how quickly America’s reliance upon mail delivery would evaporate. The internet has literally changed the way the world communicates and our Postal Service must adjust to this new reality.”
Clearly none of these answers is an in-depth analysis of the issue. That was not our intent. Rather, we asked each politician for a short statement on this subject in order to get a sense of their general thinking.
We did not receive responses from Rep. Rohrabacher or congressional candidate Alan Lowenthal.
Here’s part of what Postmaster General Donahoe is looking for:
“Congress must act this year to address these core issues:
Resolve the pre-funding of Retiree Health Benefits (RHB)
Return the $6.9 billion overfunding of the Postal Service’s obligations to the Federal Employees’ Retirement System (FERS)
Grant the Postal Service the authority to determine delivery frequency
Allow the Postal Service the flexibility to restructure its healthcare and pension systems.”
Click here to read the entire speech.
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About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
In 
In 2006 the Republican led Congress passed a law that stated that the USPS had to fully fund it's pension plan within 6 years. No Federal, State, Local or private company has to do this.
Prior to that the USPS had been a profitable enterprise, taking NO government money.
After the law went into effect the USPS started to become a money losing enterprise.
So, what would happen if UPS or FedEx had to do what the USPS has been ordered by law to do? Both would be out of business. What would happen if any Federal agency had to do what the USPS was ordered to do by law. They would have to increase taxes to make up for the trillions in deficits.
If Orange County was ordered to do what the USPS was required by law to do, they would have to let every employee go, and still there would not be enough revenue to cover the costs.
If the USPS were allowed to return to the way the law was written PRIOR to 2006, it would be profitable immediately.
In simple terms, the goal was to make the USPS unprofitable, and it succeeded. Now there can be justification to eliminate the union, or even to privatize the post office.
The right thing to do is to force the USPS to fund pensions exactly like their competitors in the private marketplace. The day that goes into effect the deficit will be gone… heck postage rates may even drop.
Shoddy article,OC 180!
No mention has been made in this piece about the requirement for “prefunding” retirement for 75 years for all postal employees — within a 10 year span.
There is no business out there in the real world who would be daft enough to attempt such a funding. Congress, however, is imposing it upon the USPS .
How do the principles of free enterprise dictate burdening a business by such nonsense?
The Constitution was read for the first time in Congress this year…it mandates the USPS. If times change to the point where it is obsolete, then we should HONORABLY and effectively figure an answer.
We should not have passed a cowardly law that will poison the Post Office and affect the lives of thousands of US mail carriers; creating larger unemployment than already exists.
The GOP needs to fight above board. If we want the Constitution to change and eliminate the USPS, then say so.
This is the coward’s way out.
The purpose of this article is to challenge the politicians on what they think should be done about the problems at the Post Office. The article is not intended to provide our solutions, and it does not claim to be a comprehensive review of those problems. In our lead in, we do mention that the Post Office has many restrictions placed on it which would not be constraints on ordinary companies and the commenter’s are certainly correct that the pension funding issue is another example of those restrictions.
Only Rep. Sanchez even mentions this issue in her comments. The other two responses are so generic as to be meaningless. Perhaps the lack of depth in the politicians’ responses is where shoddiness lurks.