"GOP efforts to cripple the Postal Service predate the current tea party “cut government spending” drumbeat echoing throughout Washington during these difficult economic times.
Five years ago, during the Bush administration, the Postal Service handled the largest volume of mail ever seen in its 236-year history. It was in that year, that the Republican controlled Congressed passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA).
As Truth-Out.org’s Allison Kilkenny recently reported, by passing PAEA, Congressional Republicans mandated that within ten years the United States Postal Service would have to fully fund retirement healthcare benefits for the next 75 years. Or to put it more plainly, the Postal Service had a decade to fully fund the retirement healthcare benefits for future employees that will not even be born until 2057 at the earliest."
"The only reason we keep hearing so much about the Postal Service’s impending budget shortfall is because PAEA requires that on September 30 a down payment be made on the healthcare benefits of postal workers 75 years into the future. This law has forced the Postal Service into the red for two years running.
In the end, Republicans know the Postal Service is a government agency that works well for Americans. And you know the GOP cannot have an example of good government floating around out there lest it get in the way of their political aspirations."
Read the whole column here
And for those of you thinking that budget cuts and deregulation creates jobs, here's a handy graph showing the effects of a republican lead economy.
No comments:
Post a Comment