“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”
For USPS, Time is Running Out
Yesterday, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the fiscal straits faced by the United States Postal Service (USPS).
Congress Ends the End of Saturday Delivery
A little-known but costly rider to the fiscal year 2013 continuing resolution has forced the U.S. Postal Service to withdraw its proposal to end Saturday delivery.
Delivering a Turnaround to the Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is broken. It is fixable.
Dire Straits – USPS Floundering
Those were the exact words of the United States Post Office’s (USPS) Postmaster General (PMG) Patrick Donahoe earlier this week during a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Postal Reform is Coming…
On Wednesday, February 6, 2013, the United States Postal Service (USPS) announced its intention to terminate Saturday first-class mail delivery on August 1, 2013. The announcement will certainly trigger a spirited public debate over the impact of such a dramatic change and could prompt resistance or outright obstructionism from lawmakers who don’t believe that the USPS is legally authorized to take such action without congressional approval. But the pronouncement serves to limn, once again, the depth and breadth of the USPS’s financial and structural woes. It also focuses attention on postal officials’ drive to reshape operations to adjust to significant and ongoing drops in first-class mail volume in the face of stultifying, costly labor work rules, excess infrastructure that straitjacket the agency. The USPS announced on November 15, 2012 a record $15.9 billion loss in fiscal year 2102.
No Last-Minute Delivery on Postal Reform
The United States Postal Service (USPS) announced on November 15, 2012 that in fiscal year (FY) 2012, which ended on September 30, the agency lost a record $15.9 billion. In June, 2012 at a PostalVision 2020 conference in Washington, Postmaster General (PMG) Patrick Donahoe flatly stated that if the USPS management team was not soon allowed to address its multiple structural deficiencies, its long-term fiscal outlook would most resemble the strife-ridden country of Greece. “We need less expensive work hours, and we need more flexibility on who can do what jobs…Nobody can operate with 1940 work rules in a 2020 environment,” stated Donahoe.
Unsolicited Mail Should Not be Funded by Taxpayers
There’s a lot that $63,000 can buy: a year’s worth of tuition, fees, and related expenses at Harvard; three years of healthcare costs for an average family of four; a brand new 2012 BMW Z4 Roadster with an automatic transmission and a turbocharged inline-six; or, if you’re a member of the House of Representatives, nine month’s worth of unsolicited mail.
Congress and USPS: Rearranging the Deck Chairs
One does not need to be an accountant to recognize that the United States Postal Service (USPS), which lost $8.5 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2010, $5.1 billion in FY 2011, and is on pace to lose another $11 billion in FY 2012, is in dire straits. Only a politician, however, would insist on delaying the Postal Service’s attempts to put a tourniquet on its red ink-hemorrhaging business model.
Congressional Meddling in USPS Makes Bailout More Likely
Congress seems to have two legislative speeds: inertia in the face of an oncoming fiscal disaster, or ugly, last-minute scrambles to ram through sham legislation that often exacerbates already fraught situations.