Popular Post Office threatened by Trump’s attacks

Bill Knight column for  7-2, 3 or 4, 2020

           

This month, affordable, reliable, universal mail delivery could vanish, the American Postal Workers Union says.

That’s tragic when the nation’s divided; the United States Postal Service literally unites us.

“The humble Post Office is a community fixture, a civic inheritance, a rural lifeline, and one of the last vestiges of a shared civic culture in America,” wrote American Conservative’s Addison Del Mastro. “Tolerate it, treasure it, and don’t let the vicissitudes of global capitalism, contempt for government, or a viral outbreak take it away from us.”

Maybe too few have realized USPS is vulnerable to White House vengeance and corporate greed.

“I think there is a lack knowledge how much people rely on our job,” said Illinois mailman Vic Murrie, a legislative liaison with the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC). “It might seem we will always be there.”

Operating without tax dollars for decades, and delivering to 160 million addresses daily, the USPS saw revenues fall due to email generally and the pandemic particularly, and USPS could lose $18 billion this year. Meanwhile, help is held up by President Trump. There was a lifeline in the CARES Act, which bailed out many businesses. (Airlines got $50 billion; United Parcel and FedEx together got $4 billion. USPS got zero.)

Both the House and the Senate favored financial relief for USPS, but President Trump threatened to veto relief measures if they included the Post Office, calling it “a joke” and saying package rates should be raised to four times current levels.

Speculation on Trump’s motives include resenting Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post as well as Amazon, pandering to corporate zeal to privatize USPS, killing its unions, hurting possible mail-in voting, and expanding White House power.

Some Republicans were as startled as Democrats. The Trump-appointed Postal Board of Governors backs a $25 billion request, and ex-GOP Congressman John McHugh, chair of shippers’ Package Coalition, , said, “Why anyone on the Republican side of the aisle would want to bring the Postal Service close to a financial shutdown six to eight weeks out from the election and thinks that’s a vote-getter is beyond me.”

It’s beyond the public, workers and customers, too.

A bipartisan poll jointed conducted by Republican firm North Star and Democratic firm Hart Research said 90% of the country wants to keep USPS alive – with money, not just loans.

Writing to Congressional leaders, presidents of the postal unions (APWU, NALC, National Postal Mail Handlers, and the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association, representing some of the 600,000+ USPS workers) said, “The mission of the Postal Service, written in federal law, is ‘to bind the Nation together’ through ‘the correspondence of the people.’ It is our collective responsibility to preserve that bond.”

If Trump forces through his huge rate hike, big companies will pass along new costs to consumers, so everyday people will pay – along with small businesses, especially those who rely on mail orders.

For centuries, the Post Office was appreciated. Before it was in the Constitution, the Continental Congress in 1775 named Ben Franklin the colonies’ first Postmaster; in 1792 George Washington and James Madison expanded it to a national system of offices and post roads; in 1862 home delivery to towns was launched; and in 1896 rural delivery was established.

It was never run to make money any more than libraries or schools were expected to profit.

Still, its revenues were healthy until 2006, when Congress enacted a law forcing USPS to pre-fund employee retirement costs, including health care, for the next 75 years. That means it must fund pensions, etc. for employees who haven't yet been hired – or born.

The year that mandate passed, USPS made $900 million in net income. Burdened with that $5 billion annual expense – which no other company must make – it’s lost money ever since.

Trump’s claimed that USPS loses money on delivering Amazon packages, but that’s false. USPS is prohibited by law from losing money in competitive services, and USPS makes money from Amazon’s business, according to its 10-K filing with the IRS last year.

There are options to improve USPS and its revenues, like reviving its former banking services and providing public broadband. But Trump’s attacks jeopardize such forward thinking.

Still, support from the public, Congress and USPS’ Board of Governors “should be strong enough to carry the day over those who would carry out an unpopular agenda to privatize the Postal Service and sell it off,” said APWU president Mark Dimondstein. 

 Murrie added, “The USPS has served through our capital burned, a Civil War, the influenza pandemic, two World Wars, the telegraph, the telephone, countless depressions and recessions, fax machines, the Internet. I can't believe this could be the end.”

Concerned? Check out USMailNotForSale.org or Heroesdelivering.com.