MANVILLE: Trimming postal service called ‘national disgrace’

To the editor:
   Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe has announced that the postal service will stop delivering Saturday mail starting in August. This push led by the Republican Congress, is a slap in the face against postal workers and all middle-class American workers.
   The Constitution guarantees the Post Office. The agency receives no federal money and is truly a blazing success story.
   In 2006, the Bush White House and the Republican Congressional members tried to destroy the post office with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. This incredible piece of garbage, which is ongoing and has been delayed since 2006, requires the agency to pre-pay the health care benefits of not only current employees, but also all employees who would retire within the next 75 years. No other agency or national corporation has ever been asked to do this.
   This ridiculous law demands that the USPS fully fund this seven-decade burden by 2016. This is costing the postal service $5.5 billion a year. In addition, due to a 40-year old accounting error, the federal Office of Personnel Management has overcharged the U.S. Post Office by as much as $80 billion for payments into the postal service retirement system. The government should restore the agency’s access to its own postage money and the impending collapse would go away.
   Each day, six days a week nationwide, letter carriers travel four million miles carrying 563 million pieces of mail reaching the doorsteps of every individual home and workplace in every single community in America. All this work is done for 47 cents per piece of mail. The USPS is an unmatched bargain, a civic treasure and a genuine public good that links all people and communities into one great nation.
   Paul Ryan and the Republican Congress would like to privatize the Post Office so that their friends can make a huge profit. He would also like to do away or privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Privatize means doing away with jobs, pensions and security.
   These legislators say that the USPS is bogged down with too many overpaid workers and with costly facilities and is therefore costing the taxpayers billions of dollars a year. This is completely wrong. Since 1971, the postal service has barely taken a dime from taxpayers. Selling stamps and other packaging products pays for the entire operation of the Postal Service, including the 32,000 local post offices. The postal service is not broke, as the Republicans would lead you to believe. The Postal Service has actually produced an $800 million operational profit despite the worst economy since the Great Depression.
   The post office system is more than a bunch of buildings. It is a community center and, for many towns, an essential part of the local identity, as well as a tangible link to the rest of the nation. Why would we let the small-minded profiteers, ranting their ideology, demolish this American jewel for corporate greed? This is not a fight merely to save 32,000 post offices and the middle-class jobs they provide, but it is a fight to advance a blazing success story in America.
   Now is the time to contact your local and national representatives and tell them they must repeal the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. The USPS is counting on American’s across this country to keep America connected.
Joseph Tenore
Hillsborough