With predictions that mail volume will plunge this year, U.S. Postmaster General John Potter is asking Congress for help in finding ways to survive.
During testimony Wednesday before the House Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia, Potter urged lawmakers to allow for greater flexibility with regard to mandated retiree health benefits.
He pointed out that, based on current law, the Postal Service will pay almost $70 billion from now through 2016 for retiree health benefits.
“We simply cannot afford the current method of funding these benefits,” Potter told lawmakers. “Without a change, we will exhaust our cash resources.”
He also outlined several strategies that the Postal Service has come up with to help close the budget gap – a "chasm, widening each day," created by the agency's revenue shortfall.
While one might assume that e-mail has eliminated a lot of the need for a postal service, you'd only be half right. Online business desperately needs a functioning shipping network, as do a whole host of other cutting edge businesses. While much of the personal communication aspect has been taken over by the 'net, the postal system still serves one of those underestimated but utterly essential roles in connecting society beyond a local level.
It would, then, be really, really bad if it breaks. Unless someone develops a better alternative or has a "silver bullet" solution for this mess.
(By the same token, in these deficit days, a shortage of $2.8 billion doesn't seem as massive as it once did.)
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