Postal Service’s $3.2 Billion Q2 Loss Underscores Need for Legislative Changes
The Postal Service’s comprehensive business plan addresses these financial challenges through revenue growth programs, process improvements, eliminating excess mail processing capacity and other actions to address underutilized assets as well as improve operational efficiencies. It includes targeted legislative changes such as giving the Postal Service the ability to transition to a five-day delivery schedule, restructuring the retiree health pre-funding, enabling the Postal Service to sponsor its own health care program that is independent of other federal health insurance programs, and returning nearly $11 billion to the Postal Service from its prior overfunding of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System (FERS) which would provide vital cash flow to ease the current liquidity crisis.
About USPS
A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service was ranked number one in overall service performance, out of the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world, Oxford Strategic Consulting. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.
