The Post Office and Congress by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
This is the official White House OMB response to a petition to save the Post Office:
"Official Office of Management and Budget Response to Save the Postal Service
A Balanced Approach to Reforming the Postal Service
By Dana Hyde
Postal volumes have dropped precipitously in recent years due to longer-run shifts in communication technologies and other economic factors. As a result, USPS accrued losses of $8.5 billion in 2010, and faced financial insolvency on September 30th. Without reform it is forecast to sustain greater losses this year and next.
However, the Postal Service needs more than just short term financial relief at this time; it needs a comprehensive plan for reform to ensure that it can be flexible and competitive in a changing marketplace. There are multiple ways to provide relief and reform, but the Administration's proposal in The President's Plan for Economic Growth and Job Creation [PDF] represents a balanced approach for postal workers, USPS, consumers, and taxpayers.
In the longer term, we are proposing to help the Postal Service reduce its excessive operating costs by providing the flexibility to gradually move to 5-day delivery, beginning in 2013. Under USPS' plan for how it would use this authority, post offices would still remain open on Saturdays, Express Mail deliveries would still be made 7 days a week, post office box deliveries would still be made on Saturdays, and USPS would continue to make Saturday deliveries in the busy weeks leading up to the winter Holidays. These and other cost structuring actions will ensure that the Postal Service remains viable for the medium- and longer-term.
We believe USPS' financial situation demands such reforms and the Administration's package includes provisions to reduce the impact for USPS workers and customers. We share petitioners' concern for the health and viability of the USPS and developed this plan with the best interest of this vital institution in mind.
As we work to get our Nation back on a sustainable fiscal path, the Administration is making tough choices across the Federal government and asking everyone to do their fair share. These shared sacrifices are not easy, but together with investments in our economic growth and job creation [PDF], they will make us stronger and more competitive for the future.
Dana Hyde is Associate Director for General Government Programs, Office of Management and Budget
Signatures: 5,954 "
The official White House response to this petition is total B.S.
It is the prefunding requirement that is responsible for over 80% of the budget shortfall.
In contrast, the cost-cutting suggestions made by Dana Hyde of the OMB would result in a diminution of services that would make the Post Office less competitive over time and lead to its marginalization and maybe elimination, along with nearly a million jobs it provides. Dana Hyde does not even address the issue of the 75-year healthcare pre-funding agreement - which no other private or public agency has to do - which people who have actually fought to save the Post Office, from the petition-writer to Senator Bernie Sanders have publicly recognized as the primary cause of the Post Offices' difficulties. She doesn't address real possibilities for reform, like issuing bonds, providing banking for the unbanked, or providing state licenses from the Post Office, that would expand services instead of contracting them by, as she suggests, reducing service to just 5 days a week.
Unfortunately, this kind of cost-cutting, middle class service robbing response, is typical of Obama's neo-conservative Office of Management and Budget.
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