Wharfie, They can fund themselves just fine, if they could fund their pension the same way everybody else does. You mean by kicking the can down the road like everybody else does?
Even Politifact rates that "half-true." And that's after they try to spin the facts as much as they could in favor of the left-wing position.
Would the Postal Service be turning a profit otherwise?
The Facebook post suggests that if the Postal Service could get rid of the 2006 law, everything else would be fine. But the reality is more bleak — especially now.
"The problem with the Postal Service is just much more fundamental than this," Campbell said.
It does appear that the law’s elimination would have brought some relief. The progressive Institute for Policy Studies wrote that "if the costs of this retiree health care mandate were removed from the USPS financial statements," the Postal Service would’ve reported operating profits from 2013 through 2018. That’s accurate, according to a chart from the Trump administration’s 2018 report on the Postal Service.
In congressional testimony last year, Postal Service board member David Williams said the pre-funding requirement has been "devastating" not only because it limited other spending, but also because it "wiped out our entire ability to make capital investments" to modernize.
Still, as we noted in 2011, the Postal Service’s problems are greater than the retirement rules.
The service’s own fact sheet says a House bill to scrap the pre-funding requirement "will not reduce our underlying liability for retiree health benefits, nor improve our cash flow or long-term financial position." COVID-19 has worsened that position further in recent weeks.
"The USPS is forecast to lose tens of billions of dollars over the next decade," the Trump administration’s 2018 report said. "Standalone proposals, such as forgiving the prefunding of post-employment benefits or renegotiating labor contracts, will be insufficient."
"If left unattended, closure of the U.S. Postal Service in the years just ahead remains a possibility," O’Rourke added. |
