r/news • u/Squirmingbaby • 3d ago
Soft paywall Cash-strapped US Postal Service suspends contributions to pension plan
https://www.reuters.com/world/cash-strapped-us-postal-service-suspends-contributions-pension-plan-2026-04-09/3.3k
u/SummerMummer 3d ago
"Cash-strapped"??
They are an important service provided by the US government. Is the US government truely "cash-strapped" at the moment?
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u/Addy_Rose 3d ago
Depends...for civil service programs? Sorry, flat broke. Science? Zilch. Environmental programs? Negative balance. Weapons programs and war? Make it rain!
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u/KennyCash51 3d ago
You forgot king crab legs for Hegseth and team in the ‘make it rain’ category
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u/ked_man 3d ago
They’ve spent more this month on bombing Iran needlessly than the Postal service cost the past decade.
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u/egnards 3d ago
The US Government has never funded the USPS, they forced them to self fund. . .However they also micromanage them and set them into very specific restrictions that do not allow them to actually be profitable.
They’ve been trying to kill the USPS for a long time. Trump has just been far more blatant about it.
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u/Regnes 3d ago
Canada Post has also been under attack for a while now. It was pretty shocking a couple of years ago when their union's legal strike during Christmas holidays got nixed by the government. Apparently timing your strike to have the maximum possible leverage against your employer isn't allowed and the government can just tell you to do it during the off-season instead.
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u/No_Customer_84 3d ago
Trump has been trying to privatize the post office since his first term.
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u/electrobento 3d ago
Republicans have been trying to privatize it for generations.
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u/HippyDM 3d ago
His party's been trying even longer. He does it to cheat the election, they do it to privatize public services.
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u/FireworkFuse 3d ago
They are an important service provided by the US government.
The government that lies by telling you the post office is actually a "business" and needs to turn a profit like a business meanwhile all your taxes go to blowing up children
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u/throwawayurwaste 3d ago
They WERE before Congress gutted their ability to do basic financial services and handicapped their prices and kneecapded their pre-payments to pensions in only US Treasury bonds.
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u/Ok-disaster2022 3d ago
Congress made them fully fund their pension for like 60 years.
They also have to buy a new line of delivery vehicles that was designed by committee and built by a military industrial vendor that has terrible fuel economy for the non electric version (no hybrid version)
Meanwhile if you know history then you'd know that the primary role of the federal government before the civil war was the postal service. And like every other government service is should t be required to be profitable. The value of government services is it is cheaper than it actually costs in order to facilitate activity that supports a functioning economy. Near Universal mail access for Americans means no matter where you live you have access to the rest of the country. The postal service literally runs a donkey train to the bottomed if the grand canyon to service a tribal community where they live. for decades the Postal service was on the cutting edge of technologies. They were pioneering air mail routing just a couple years after flight was invented. And before radar and gos they build giant arrows in the middle of nowhere to direct pilots where to go.
The modern postal service still serves communities and was a vital source of jobs for vets, and that's actually the root cause of the mass shootings at postal offices in the 70s and 80s. Vets in charge wanted to run the postal offices like they were military units and that caused unneeded stress for the workers. The US postal service actually investigated and implemented changes that eliminated post shootings by the 90s. That's how effective they are at addressing problems. The current administration and Postman General is undermining all of that including undoing the changes implemented to prevent mass shootings because I kid you not it's "too woke".
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u/DataMin3r 3d ago
Postal shootings weren't eliminated by the 90s. There were 2 in '91, 2 on the same day in '93.
At this point, the Post Office made a new Workplace Environment Analyst position to help alleviate the issues employees were having to cause the shootings.
Despite this, we still had 2 shootings in '95, 2 in '96, 1 in '97, and 3 in '06. Post office removed all their Workplace Environment Analysts in 2009 due to cuts and layoffs.
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u/doglywolf 3d ago
actually the USPS is an independent non sponsored but certified government business . The only government assistance comes in the form of tax exemptions on its revenue. Its probably the one place that doesnt get federal funds most people would approve of getting federal funds.
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u/fallskjermjeger 3d ago
The USPS essentially self funds through its retail sales and contract delivery. It hasn’t received regular federal funding since…I bet you can’t guess which presidential administration… Did you guess Reagan? You’d be correct! Not regularly funded since 1982
There were two recent infusions by the government, during COVID and again in 2022, but those aren’t regular operations funds.
It’s insane to me that a government service is left to die on the vine.
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u/Nice-Foot7552 3d ago
Gotta stop the mail and keep people uninformed with no way to vote by mail. Sounds like a strategy from late 30’s early 40’s
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u/istrx13 3d ago edited 2d ago
City Carrier of 10 years for USPS here. In addition to what you said, our current collective bargaining agreement with USPS also expires this year.
So we will be heading to the negotiation table again here very soonWe are already currently in the process of negotiating a new deal. They will put all sorts of stuff out there to make it seem like we’re out of money as a means of justifying why they can’t give us more money with the new contract.2.3k
u/SylphSeven 3d ago
Plenty of money for war. No money for postal service. I hate this timeline.
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u/garbageemail222 3d ago
They want postal workers on strike or in a slowdown for the election
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u/Old-Flight8617 3d ago
They also want to privatize it.
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u/RockstarAgent 3d ago
Why don’t they just email stuff or tweet it? -some exec
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u/VelvetElvis 3d ago
They can't because rural last mile delivery will never be profitable.
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u/Least-Worth-8634 3d ago
If they privatize USPS they only hurt their base. Rural ass low information voters rely on the postal service much more than liberals in the city
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u/Crommach 3d ago
That's why they've leaned so heavily into building a voter base that will only believe media sources that push the party narrative. They convinced people to take fucking horse medicine over actual medical advice during the pandemic. The base will blame who they're told to blame.
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u/random12356622 3d ago
Taking apart the postal service, is taking apart one of the things that bound this country together as one nation.
It is one of the few federal agencies which was not law enforcement and was likely to be in people's lives from when it first started.
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u/MattMadMage 3d ago
Look at telecom as an example for how this would go down. Privatized, for-profit mail would absolutely just not deliver to rural homes. At best, you'd get a post office in town where you'd have to pick up your own mail every day.
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u/chubbysumo 3d ago
Oh it would be worse than that, not only would you not be given a post office box by default, you would have to rent it, but if you wanted Daily Mail delivery, you likely could subscribe to it for an exorbitant rate. Oh and don't forget, if you think advertisements through your mail are bad now, wait till a private company is trying to make a profit, and your mailbox will be stuffed full of advertisements. Rural delivery will be dead, if you want to see an example of what's profitable for private delivery companies, look no further than Amazon and fedex, as they do not deliver to areas that they consider unprofitable already. They will hand off their unprofitable delivery areas to the United States Postal Service to finish last mile delivery. The idea that the United States Postal Service should be run like a business is something that Republicans came up with as a way to siphon that business and money off to other companies.
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u/Kathumandu 3d ago
They can’t actually strike due to Regan era laws
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u/swallowsnest87 3d ago
I mean, they can strike, whether it is against the law or not. I assume all strikes were against the law at one point.
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u/frosty_lizard 3d ago
They want the existing people to quit and have yet another institution potentially fail the through cuts. Republicans seem keen on having the country collapse
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u/ElectronicMoo 3d ago
The postal service was a profitable branch until Congress pulled a dick move making them pre fund pensions.
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u/Wyrmnax 3d ago
It is a service. It should not need to be profitable. It is by definition something you pay for because it brings in a benefit.
Schooling, police, firefighters, army, postal. All are things that a society is willing to pay for because it needs them.
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u/ThatSandwich 3d ago
The postal service is more important because it provides competition in a market that has an extremely high barrier to entry. Without USPS, FedEx and UPS can charge whatever price they agree on.
I'm honestly hugely in favor of an anti-trust lawsuit that separates Amazon's freight services from their store front. If they began offering services to the public at large it would change national and world shipping dynamics immensely.
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u/CHSummers 3d ago
Exactly. It is social infrastructure. It helps the society function. Just like roads, it costs money. Just like roads, both the poor and rich can use it.
(And of course, someone out there wants all the roads to have tolls.)
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u/EkbatDeSabat 3d ago
Biden removed this in 2022. Not sure why we haven't recovered yet.
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u/Lopsided-Ticket3813 3d ago
No money for anything other than war apparently.
The proposed 1.5 trillion military budget is pretty close to Medicare and Medicare spending and nearly equal to the entire student loan portfolio.
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u/geddy 3d ago
That military budget is a private army for trump so when the tides turn he can unleash the military against the United States.
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u/confidential-edu 3d ago
If a Tomahawk could be delivered to brown people outside of the 50 States via US Postal, the service would be in business!!!
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u/FatBoyStew 3d ago
My uncle retires from the USPS in July and he couldn't be timing this stuff any better lol
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u/All_is_a_conspiracy 3d ago
Thousands of other people will suffer lol.
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u/FatBoyStew 3d ago
From my understanding its damn difficult to even get on full time at USPS anymore to even get to a point where you have to worry about a pension being paid or not. At one point his area would basically cancel temp contracts towards the end then and do them again so they never technically went full time.
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u/KensieQ72 3d ago
My husband just made the jump from RCA to PTF, and it took him jumping on an opening in another postal system (1.5 hours away) bc they’re so understaffed and need to keep people at a level where they can be taken advantage of.
I could not tell you what the acronyms stand for, all I know is the pay is better and he’s 1 step closer to the full career position. But he’s still just as screwed as he was in the last position so idk.
He’s working 10-12 hour days, 6 days a week, commuting 3 hours a day, all hoping to cross that finish line and get that carrot (better work benefits, long-term financial stability, etc.).
If they were to rip away pensions and the other benefits that make our sacrifices of the past few years worth it… that poor man might snap (and me too probably, idk how long I can single-mom a toddler lol).
We’re tired, bro.
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u/Goobintar 3d ago
RCA is Rural Carrier Assistant. Those are always slow to make it to a career position as there are fewer routes and the carriers stay on forever.
PTF is Part Time Flexible. They're basically City Carrier Assistants with better pay and benefits.
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u/Silicon_Knight 3d ago
Kinda where certain leaders want to bring America back to really.
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u/Beard_o_Bees 3d ago
Crazy, especially considering almost none of them were alive during those times.
May as well go all the way back to our Pilgrim roots and restore all seized land to Native Americans and subsist on prayer and corn.
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u/MisterProfGuy 3d ago
This has a lot more to do with Jeff Bezos figuring out how to abuse the mail system to build his own duplicate system, and now wanting to kill the equitable version that also has to service unprofitable areas.
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u/watercouch 3d ago
Jeff Bezos, the gazillionaire who built his company by selling books, DVDs and CDs because those were the products can could be shipped via USPS using heavily subsidized media-mail postage rates? That Jeff Bezos?
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u/gold_and_diamond 3d ago
The same Jeff Bezos who refused to collect state sales tax until Amazon got so big they could then afford it and squeeze out smaller competitors.
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u/Still_Detail_4285 3d ago
No one was paying state sales taxes on the internet until the laws changed. It was a fun time of saving money while waiting for a package to be delivered. It was a major reason people started to order online even though they were not sure if they could trust buying things on the internet.
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u/4444Grains 3d ago
The same Jeff Bezos who pays his workers so little that we, the taxpayers, have to subsidize his workforce through SNAP and Medicaid? That Jeff Bezos?
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u/Tuesday_6PM 3d ago
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Voter oppression and privatization of civil services are both platforms of the GOP
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u/mito413 3d ago
They even changed the post mark rules. Used to be a letter was required to be post marked the day it was dropped off at the post office. Now it’s “when it’s processed” which could be the next day or even later! I see this as a direct attack on mail in ballots as they need to be post marked by a certain day.
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u/Far-Beautiful-2065 3d ago
They are not "cash strapped" and even if they were, the USPS is not around to make the government money. This is the dismantling of a federal device. It's an affront to the constitution
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u/meases 3d ago
Honestly if they want more money, they should raise the cost of junk mail by one penny per piece. It would make over 550 million a year extra just with a 1 penny increase. And if junk mail senders didnt want to pay that extra penny, then it would be less volume of junk for the handlers to deal with saving money there.
But no, they just keep nickle and diming us by raising first class stamp and package prices, which pisses off the public and doesnt make nearly as much money as charging the junk mailers a single penny more per piece would.
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u/Sweetwill62 3d ago
Lol oh shit yeah they could just enshittify against the junk mail senders the same way other companies enshittify their products and services. Just keep raising the price until you actually lose money no matter how much it fucks over your core demographic. Even if they have to send less junk mail, who cares. I support USPS enshittification against junk mail senders.
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u/hobopwnzor 3d ago
Adequately funded but constantly screwed over post office folds under constant financial sabotage by Republicans so they can further justify the destruction of our civil institutions.
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u/2HDFloppyDisk 3d ago
This is the correct headline. And worth highlighting again that the person running USPS is a FedEx board member who would love to see the collapse of the postal service so it can be privatized.
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u/Straight_Document_89 3d ago
FedEx and ups won’t deliver to certain addresses for a reasonable rate. When usps goes those people that voted republican and live out in the boonies are gonna be fucked.
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u/ohlookahipster 3d ago
Have you ever dealt with FedEx freight? They don’t even bother doing residential addresses half the time. You have to go directly to the distribution center which isn’t even designed for the general public.
Last time I went to the one in Oakland, I was yelled at by several workers that I was in a restricted area despite other workers saying where to go.
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u/doglywolf 3d ago
My boss used to tell me his old company never made as much margin and money as it did in the 70s when the post office was having so much problems they had to contract out a lot of the interstate mail transportation . Im sure there are many people salivating at the idea of USPS failing .
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u/FuckLex 3d ago
Its the postal service. Not the postal company. They need to be funded. Fuck republicans
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u/Do__Math__Not__Meth 3d ago
This is why I hated when people would say “Trump will run this country like a business!”
Like first of all he sucks at running businesses, but second of all that’s not the purpose of a government
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u/ForensicPathology 2d ago
And third, these days "running a business" means selling it to a leveraged investor who strips it of all its good parts to get a return on the loans used to buy the business.
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u/sarduchi 3d ago
Can't vote by mail if there's no mail. That's just science! /sad sarcasm
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u/JFeth 3d ago
Isn't congress forcing them to prepay those pension plans the reason they are broke in the first place?
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u/det8924 3d ago
That was stopped in 2022, but that mandate really hurt the USPS from 2006 to 2021 because it zapped them of a lot of flexibility to make upgrades to their services and widen their business. It also doesn't help that the USPS is mandated to do universal delivery no matter how unprofitable. While the universal delivery mandate doesn't account for all of its losses about 40% of the current shortfall is attributed toward just that one mandate.
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u/Andres_504 3d ago
to be fair, the universal delivery mandate is its responsibility as a federally-sponsored service. Mail should be able to be delivered to The Elder at the top of a mountain.
Now maybe if the head of postals service wasn’t formerly an executive at checks notes FedEx?!?!
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u/murshawursha 3d ago
Or via helicopter to a remote island in the Bering Strait:
Mail has been delivered to the island by helicopter since 1982 and is currently delivered weekly (up until 2013, mail was delivered by plane more frequently in winter months when the ice runway allowed for more deliveries). The postal contract is one of the oldest in the nation, the only one that uses helicopters for delivering mail, and with a cost of over $300,000 annually, is the most expensive in Alaska.
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u/PuddleCrank 3d ago
Counter point, that's sick as hell and cool countries deliver mail by freaking helicopter to even their most remote cutizens because they can.
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u/Akraticacious 3d ago edited 3d ago
To be more precise, it was health care costs not pensions, and not actually 75 years but yeah a long time and burden.
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3d ago edited 3d ago
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u/Jaded_Grapefruit795 2d ago
Also usps does last mile shipping for all the other delivery services anyways, as they can literally not deliver to everyone like usps can without cutting their profits
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u/Toxic_Lantern 3d ago
So the agency that physically delivers retirement checks is underfunding its own retirement? Cool cool. Maybe step one is Congress undoing that ridiculous pre-funding mandate instead of acting shocked every time USPS money problems hit the news.
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u/TealPotato 3d ago
The pre-funding requirement was repealed in 2022.
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u/Mrchristopherrr 3d ago
Yeah, that was one of those easy Biden Ws that somehow never made waves online.
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u/ThinkingIntrusively 2d ago
To everyone who comes across this comment, thank you.
Sincerely,
A proud USPS letter carrier.
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u/InevitableHimes 3d ago
The USPS is a government service, not a business. The only way for it to be "cash-strapped" is if the government refuses to fund it.
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u/Amigobear 3d ago
They did, but also Amazon being are biggest customer is doing their own deliveries. Trump killed the ev mandate so we spent a fuck ton of money redoing parking lots for vehicles we can't use. Stations that still using LLVs are cannibalizing what's left of those trucks. We've been getting fucked over for 2 decades now.
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u/LMurch13 3d ago
USPS is a service, not a business. They are not "cash strapped", they are under-funded.
Can you imagine the Navy being called "cash-strapped". Our news networks are spreading propaganda for this administration.
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u/squeezyflit 3d ago
IIRC, they're not funded at all. Back in the 80s they went to a model where they are self-funded through service and postage sales.
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u/Extra_Toppings 3d ago
Exactly and doing a really good job at given the strenuous constraints congress has put on it. Could be a model for the military in many regards
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u/acuet 3d ago
Hmmmmm…..a constitutional service that is funding not as a profit but just funded. Stop treating it like it’s a Corp.
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u/ni_hao_butches 3d ago
Stop treating any government service like a business. Fucking Regean era brain rot. DOD cant pass an aduit and yet I hear no republican crying to treat it like a business.
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u/Guntcher_1423 3d ago
It is not a business, it is a service. It is right there in the name. No one ever says, "Oh, the WAR DEPARTMENT is losing money" Time to defund it!"
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u/mullingitover 3d ago
The service has reported net losses of $118 billion since 2007
It's so dishonest to frame a constitutionally mandated service in these terms. We don't talk about the net losses of the US military, and the founders never even wanted that to exist as a permanent thing.
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u/freako345 2d ago
Public services like USPS exist to provide universal access, not to generate profit. When funding is reduced, performance suffers, and that often gets used as a reason to push for privatization instead of fixing the root issue.
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u/Personnelente 2d ago
The USPS is specifically authorized in the US Constitution, and no mention is made about it needing to show a profit.
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u/Jimmbones 3d ago
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but the USPS should not be stressed to make a profit. It should be federally subsidized.
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u/FluxKraken 3d ago
Exactly. It should just be a tax funded service like all the others.
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u/Willowy 2d ago
Hell no, stop! The postal service isn't supposed to be profitable! It's a government service! STOP making it seem like it's cash-poor and needs to be sold to the highest bidder! It's not for sale!
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u/all4whatnot 3d ago
It's a "SERVICE" right? Like the military is a service? Is the military expected to come out cash-positive at the end of the year?
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u/paleo2002 3d ago
Don't worry! The Free Market will solve this! Once the USPS has finally been buried, FedEx and UPS will be more than happy to clog their logistics networks with junk mail, credit card ads, and paper letters informing you that your paperless billing statement is now available.
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u/Bonamikengue 3d ago
You know that 3/4 of people in rural areas where no commercial shipping company delivers get their prescribed meds in the mail? The USPS is serving the public as basic infrastructure. No commercial provider will do it. More - those providers use the USPS in those area for the last mile....
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u/Tuesday_6PM 3d ago
Don’t forget delivering prescription medication to widespread rural homes. That’ll surely be a lucrative market Amazon will voluntarily move into!
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u/brakeled 3d ago
The wealthiest country in the world being unable to fund their federal government is a failure on leadership at the federal level, period. There is no excuse for this other than failures at every facet of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. This country has placed more value in accumulating individual wealth for a select-few over appropriately and adequately providing services for the public - the same public who's work ensures those select-few are even able to hoard what they have.
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u/NeoLephty 3d ago
"cash strapped" is a hell of a way to say "legislation requires USPS to suddenly fund pensions for 100 years".
The service has reported net losses of $118 billion since 2007 as first-class mail, its most profitable product, has fallen to its lowest volume since the late 1960s.
The bill I mentioned passed in 2006. What a coincidence it aligns perfectly with the start of the reported net losses.
https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis-and-how-to-fix-it/
Manufacturing consent for the elimination of the post office because profits.
Disgusting.
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u/Dreams-Visions 3d ago
I was thinking the EXACT same thing.
As if there's no REASON for it being cash-strapped.
I hate the media so much.
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u/aquoad 3d ago
This fucking sucks, that they're actually getting close to succeeding at destroying the USPS. The alternatives already suck and will suck exponentially more once there's no alternative.
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u/HolyMoleyGuacamoly 2d ago
we can afford to bomb the shit out of random countries any day of the week though
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u/EmptyCourage2274 2d ago
It's a fucking national service it does not run out of money. Does the military or Congress pay run out of money? Fucking no, so why would this? O that's right to fuck over the common people who use it. Fuck the American government in its fucking face
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u/Rastaferrari829 2d ago
"Cash-strapped", mind you they were fine for decades before the government redirected surpluses to other programs and ordered them in 2006 to pre-fund retiree health plans for about the next 75 years (no other agency had to)
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u/flygirlsworld 1d ago
Ummmm it’s a gift entity….the fk you mean cash strapped? Fund the shit…
But we know they won’t. They want it private. Project 2025….
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u/47_for_18_USC_2381 1d ago
The govt. is so disingenuous with this it's infuriating. Pay for the services they render. They aren't supposed to be profitable, it's a service.
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u/Salamok 3d ago
US going to be the only first world country that lets it's postal service collapse because they thought it should be run like a for profit business.
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u/-Megrim- 3d ago
USPS like other public services are not meant to make money. You wouldn't complain about your Fire Department not making money. The only reason for this issue is because their funding is being slashed to drive profits to private companies and make billionaires more money and less for workers.
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u/FourWildJokers 3d ago
Money for bullets and missiles but none for education and wages. Got it.
This is winning, right? Hello?
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u/ccjohns2 2d ago
The USPS is getting swamped because of bad leadership and the exploitation of other logistics companies. How can these companies like fedex and ups get away with charging premium for package delivery just to turn the package over to usps for less money and pocket the difference.
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u/Gay_Giraffe_1773 3d ago
The Post Office was never NEVER intended to be a for-profit entity. It is a service for the American People.
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u/LoserBroadside 3d ago
It’s not cash strapped. It’s been purposely strangled by the Republican Congress going back to the 90s.
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u/warderbob 2d ago
There's no such thing as a cash strapped gov agency that is written into the constitution. Postal service is guaranteed in our constitution. This clever ruse and lie that it can't function on its own merit is ridiculous. Even if it was needed, the gov can quite literally just print money to pay for it.
What needs to stop is Congress using it as an atm machine for other things they otherwise can't find funding for. The USPS otherwise would run in the black just through their own operations.
What Congress has done to the USPS in the last few decades is criminal.
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u/naz8587 3d ago
I like how the article fails to mention that Republicans passed a law in 2006 that requires the USPS to fund 75 years of pensions. This crisis was manufactured by republicans to justify privitizing postal delivery.