CAGW Blasts Post Office for Pursuing Rate Increases | Citizens Against Government Waste

CAGW Blasts Post Office for Pursuing Rate Increases

Press Release

For Immediate Release   Contact: Sean Rushton or Philippa Jeffery
October 1, 2001(202) 467-5300

 

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Rampant at USPS 

Washington, D.C. - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today excoriated the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) for filing a new rate case with the Postal Rate Commission, seeking $6.1 billion in postage rate increases across the board.  The proposed hike comes in addition to the $3 billion in increases the Post Office has implemented since January.  If the rate case takes the customary 10 months to a year, the rates could be going to effect in October of 2002, just in time for the USPS’s most lucrative quarter, the holiday season.  There are some indications that the USPS may seek to expedite the case. 

"Postal management has long refused to trim their bloated workforce, enact real productivity reforms, or trim some of the $1.4 billion in waste identified by USPS's own inspector general," CAGW Vice President Leslie K. Paige said.  "The Post Office, which has tax exemptions and other government-conferred benefits worth more than $1 billion annually, has seen a decline in mail volume over the last several years due to the Internet," Paige also said.  "Yet, today it employs 906,000 people, a 36 percent increase from 1980.  The agency has lost tens of millions of dollars in failed commercial ventures unrelated to delivering the mail and has been plagued by wasteful spending, such as shelling out exorbitant moving stipends to postal executives to move closer to their offices, postal officials using chauffeur-driven limos, and handing out more than $100 million in management bonusses during a year when it was losing over a billion."

The rate increase request amounts to an overall rate increase of 8.7 percent.  For Standard Mail, rates would rise 7.3 percent.  Regular Standard Mail rates would rise an average of 8 percent, and nonprofit rates an average of 6.7 percent.  Commercial enhanced carrier route rates would rise an average of 6.2 percent, and nonprofit enhanced carrier route rates would increase an average of 6.5 percent.

“It is one of the most wasteful and bloated operations in America,” Paige added.  “Only the USPS would raise rates during an economic downturn, when real businesses tend to be cutting prices.  Only the USPS would maintain a bulging workforce when real businesses are trying to reduce labor costs.  Only the USPS would jack up prices even while service and efficiency deteriorate.  If it were truly a private business it would have gone Chapter XI years ago.  The only thing propping it up is its special breaks from the government and its monopoly status.”

CAGW is the nation’s largest taxpayer advocacy group with over one million members and supporters nationwide.  It is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.