Originally created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775, almost a year to the day before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the new United States Post Office was deemed so important to the fledgling nation that none other than Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first Post Master General.
When the Constitution re-designed the national government in 1789, one of the first orders of business was empowering Congress to establish a new federal post office (Article I, Section 8, Clause 7).
The Post Office was the preeminent government service and the nation’s communications infrastructure. Timely delivery of mails was vital to commerce and enabled national expansion. And in an era of smaller government, the Post Office accounted for upwards of half of all federal employees during parts of the 19th century.
But beyond its economic importance, the United States Post Office has also played a role in the nation’s cultural life. In many small towns throughout rural America, it was not uncommon once upon a time for the only structures on many a Main Street to be the local church and the local post office. No wonder then that American culture abounds with references to the post office, ranging from the trope of carriers being plagued by overprotective dogs, to the office’s unofficial but iconic pledge that:
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
This phrase, engraved at the James A. Farley Post Office building at 8th Avenue and 33rd Street in New York City, is a translation of Herodotus describing the Persian postal carriers from 2,500 years ago.
However, the the lofty cultural status of the United States Postal Service (USPS) is about to take a hit. Last week, the Post Master General announced that come August, it would be suspending regular home delivery of the mails on Saturdays, except for packages. In financial straits, the budget-cutting move will save the USPS about $2 billion in its first year, putting a dent in the $16 Billion it lost just in 2012.
How to explain this fiscal misery? Several factors are at play. The USPS has been under financial pressure from a number of sources over the past decade. Of course the internet has usurped traffic. And there’s also lost market share to private carriers like Federal Express and United Parcel Service, which cut into the lucrative package and overnight delivery markets, while leaving the USPS with an unenviable monopoly in the money-losing, but vitally important, national letter-and-stamp service..
But those kinds of problem can be overcome. For example, despite regular rate increases over the the last decade, the United States still offers one of the cheapest such services in the world, with a flat fee of 46 cents to send a 1 oz. envelope 1st class anywhere in the country (Updated 4/13/2020: Now $0.50).
For half a dollar, you can send a birthday card from Maine to Hawai’i, and be confident that it will arrive in 2-3 days. Pretty impressive. Especially when compared to other nations, almost all of which charge more for an ounce of domestic mail, even though most of those countries are quite a bit smaller in size.
A much bigger issue for the USPS, however, is attacks from Congressional Republicans. For about thirty years now, the USPS has had to operate without any taxpayer dollars, save for some small subsidies for overseas U.S. electoral ballots. In other words, the federal government is unwilling to fund a basic federal service, forcing the USPS to pay it’s own way.
That’s been difficult, and as a result, the USPS pension healthcare system until recently was not fully funded. Instead, it was partially covered with IOUs backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government.
So a quarter-century after Congress made this mess, they decided to fix it? right?
No. They made it worse.
In 2006, Republicans pushed through Congress and President George W. Bush signed into law the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). The PAEA mandates that the Post Office fully fund its pension healthcare costs through the year 2056.
And it was given only 10 years to find the money to fund a half-century worth of retirement healthcare benefits.
To clarify just how odious this regulation is, think about it like this: By the end of 2016, the Post Office must finish finding the money to fully fund not only all of its current retirees and current workers, but also decades’ worth of future workers, some of whom it hasn’t even hired yet.
The U.S. military doesn’t have to do this. Private corporations don’t have to do this. Only the Post Office.
No wonder the USPS is now bleeding money down the drain like it was shivved in a prison shower stall; which, metaphorically speaking, it was.
Cloaked in the mantle of fiscal responsibility, the real impetus for the 