Issa introduces bill to ‘prevent bailout’ of Postal Service Published: 12:10 AM 06/24/2011 | Updated: 1:49 PM 06/24/2011
By Alexis Levinson
Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the congressional oversight committee, introduced legislation on Thursday to significantly reform the United States Postal Service in order to prevent the need for a “taxpayer bailout.”
The legislation follows USPS’ announcement on Wednesday that it will no longer pay money into its Federal Employee Retirement System in order to cut costs.
Issa said that such a solution was not acceptable.
“The Postal Service lost $8.5 billion last year,” he said in a statement. “It is going to lose, at least, $8.3 billion this year. And it is projected to lose $8.5 billion the year after that. Congress can’t keep kicking the can down the road on out of control labor costs and excess infrastructure of USPS and needs to implement reforms that aren’t a multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout.”
The legislation does several things. It creates the Postal Service Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority, “which will have a broad mandate to restructure the Postal Service and reduce costs in order to bring the institution back to fiscal solvency when the Postal Service goes into default to the Federal government. The Authority will be disbanded once USPS meets several benchmarks that ensure financial health.”
It would also create the Commission on Postal Reorganization, whose purpose would be to make recommendations to Congress on closures or consolidations with the goal of reducing USPS costs by $2 billion a year.
The goal, Issa said, is to “[encourage] USPS to modernize its retail network and enables USPS to act more like a business.” (Issa warns ATF not to retaliate against whistleblowers)
To that end, some regulations would be removed to make it easier for the Postal Service to do things like close postal facilities that are not profitable.
Poster Comment:
Typical union ploy, don't pay those who are retired.... only those who are working because they get more dues that way.....
