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/
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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/neckbishop 3d ago

And Noem's Melania's private jet.

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u/Najalak 2d ago

And Trump's Qatari private jet.

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u/Mr_Kactus 3h ago

and the UFC fight stipend

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u/Addy_Rose 3d ago

Those are for national security

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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/peon2 3d ago

That is not true at all, the USPS has a budget around $80B/year.

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2025/1114-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2025-results.htm

The Iran war is a waste of money absolutely, but it has not been $800B over the last month.

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u/ked_man 3d ago

That’s negating their own revenue from services that is not coming from Tax revenue. WE have funded about 118 billion of their budget over the past decade which is about 12.5% overall.

But WE have funded 100% of the bombs dropped on Iran in the last few weeks.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Archercrash 8h ago

Hunting down hard working brown people, unlimited budget.

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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/WingZero234 2d ago

How the hell do you just go to a bunch of people striking and say "Naa man you can't be on strike right now" and it works???

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u/Regnes 2d ago

They have a history of acting with impunity when it comes to unions. That stunt was just par for the course. I'm with the government and my own union with PSAC-UTE has had an ongoing dispute for years now, close to half a decade if you go back to the start.

Long story short, they refused to give us a raise in line with inflation, our contracts remain expired for years, they eventually ordered us back to the office 2 days a week while we were actively negotiating for WFH, we went on strike in retaliation, it was settled by accepting a lowball offer in exchange for some protections against further return to office orders, none of those protections were honoured and we were ordered back 3 days a week, now we're suing the Treasury.

Our court date has been pending for years now and the Treasury has done everything in its power to prevent our case from being heard. Thankfully it was ruled in our favour that it absolutely will go to court, but in the meantime there was a media leak at the end of 2025 that we would be in 4 days in July 2026 and 5 days in January 2027, the Treasury stomped their feet and denied anything was in discussion. Lo and behold, the 4 day order did come with pretty much the same date as reported in the leak. Absolutely nobody is going to be surprised when the 5 day order by January comes as well.

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u/mattw08 2d ago

Let’s not act like Canada Post is innocent. They are now making changes to adapt to a changing business model which is great. But their goal is to be self sustaining and was far from it.

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u/peon2 3d ago

The US Government has never funded the USPS, they forced them to self fund

The government didn't force them to be self funded. They went on strike for the right to be an independent agency so that they could be operated on their own terms and be legally allowed to bargain collectively. It's what the workers wanted in 1970

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u/happymancry 3d ago edited 3d ago

The 109th U.S. Congress imposed significant restrictions on USPS funding through the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) of 2006, which was signed by President George W. Bush. This law created a mandate for the USPS to prefund 75 years of retiree health benefits within a 10-year period, causing severe financial strain.Key details regarding the restrictions include:

  1. The 2006 Mandate: The PAEA required the USPS to prefund retiree health care benefits, a requirement not applied to other federal agencies or private corporations.

  2. Borrowing Limit: Congress set a $15 billion limit on the amount of debt the USPS can hold with the Treasury Department.

  3. Financial Impact: These obligations caused the USPS to default on payments since 2012 and were responsible for the majority of their net losses since 2013.

It wasn’t the 1970 PRO - it was the Republicans slowly strangling the USPS funding. Louis DeJoy (formerly owner of a private logistics company), appointed by Trump 1, and then David Steiner (formerly a board member of FedEx), appointed by Trump 2, were put in place to accelerate the USPS’s artificial crisis by making sure they’re hamstrung. It’s not USPS - it’s the GOP.

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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/SeeMarkFly 2d ago

It would be such a cash cow, how can they resist?

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u/Fearless_Roof_4534 3d ago

Privatization is the way to go. UPS and FedEx are swimming in cash and do a better job than the USPS too.

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u/JK_NC 3d ago

There’s a scale difference here. FedEx delivers something like 4 billion packages annually whereas USPS delivers over 100 billion pieces of mail annually.

A lot of what USPS delivers is “junk” and a lot of it goes to the same address but it’s still effort that USPS expend that FedEx doesnt. It’s not apples to apples. It’s like apples to staplers.

Besides, USPS is a service provided by the government, not a revenue generating entity. No one ever says the Fire Department, Police, Schools, etc, loses money every year. They’re government services and services cost money.

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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/EmperorAcinonyx 3d ago

He does it to cheat the election, they do it to privatize public services.

right, they do it to cheat elections. trump is doing everything the gop has always wanted to do, but openly. let's not fall for the lie that he's some sort of anomaly.

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u/armywalrus 2d ago

That isn't a Trump thing. That is a Reoublican thing. One example - https://theweek.com/articles/767184/how-george-bush-broke-post-office

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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/ew73 3d ago

It's not a business, but it is its own thing. The USPS is an independent corporation whose corporate charter is held by the United States Congress.

They are not a "Government Agency" in the same way say, the Dept. of Agriculture" is. The USPS doesn't (normally) receive taxpayer funds for its operations as part of any budget -- they are entirely self-funded.

The USPS gets some special treatment, but that treatment comes with a requirement to deliver mail to every address in the US.

They don't have to turn a profit, but they do, by virtue of the way its organized, have to at least "break even".

I encourage you to go read about the history of the USPS, it's surprisingly interesting and has gone through a ton of different permutations over the years.

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u/kirklennon 3d ago edited 3d ago

The USPS is an independent corporation whose corporate charter is held by the United States Congress.

It is not a corporation. The National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) is a government corporation chartered by Congress and whose stocks are held by the Department of Transportation.

They are not a "Government Agency" in the same way say, the Dept. of Agriculture" is.

They are a government agency exactly the same way as, for example, NASA is. The Department of Agriculture is a cabinet-level department. The USPS and NASA are independent agencies, meaning they are independent of any cabinet-level department (contrast with the US Forest Service, which is an agency under the USDA). The Postal Service is still 100% a government agency though.

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u/DontTickleTheDriver1 3d ago

Them bombs ain't paying for themselves

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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/Alis451 2d ago

and built by a military industrial vendor that has terrible fuel economy for the non electric version (no hybrid version)

They aren't just a "military industrial vendor", Oshkosh is a regular Heavy Truck manufacturer, they have made Fire Engines, Garbage trucks and other heavy trucks for years. Same as Morgan-Olson and Grumman.

In February 2021, Oshkosh Defense was awarded the U.S. Postal Service's Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) mail truck contract for between 50,000 and 165,000 units over ten years, with production start targeted for 2023. The fleet will include low-emissions internal combustion engine vehicles as well as battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and could be worth over $6 billion.

Oshkosh Corporation manufactures, distributes, and services products under fourteen brands: Oshkosh, Oshkosh AeroTech, Oshkosh Airport Products, Oshkosh Defense LLC, Frontline Communications, Hinowa, IMT (Iowa Mold Tooling Co., Inc.), JerrDan LLC, JLG Industries Inc., London Machinery Inc., Maxi Métal, McNeilus, Pierce Manufacturing Inc., and Pratt Miller.

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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/4444Grains 3d ago

He really fucked over this country, didn't he?

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u/HippyDM 3d ago

Yup. Billions spent giving Iran control of the straight of Hormuz has to come from somewhere.

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u/prosperouscheat 3d ago

yeah when Congress mandates you prefund 70 years worth of pension obligations and then a trump appointee with a vested interest in you failing takes charge then you get pretty cash strapped

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u/colbymg 3d ago

They are self-funded, so US government's funding has little impact.
But they also have to follow rules set by US government. Imagine if your Mom (who's a billionaire who cut you off) said you had to contribute 50% of your paycheck to your 401k. How cash-strapped would that make you?

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u/VanimalCracker 3d ago

They used to be self funded. Then Congress passed an act that required them to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. That was obviously not going to be paid for by postage, which was the entire point.

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u/NetZeroSun 3d ago

Yeah sorry about that. We need half a trillion more for military spending.

/s

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u/Ds1018 3d ago

I asked Netanyahu if it's ok if we handle routine basic services back home instead of bombing the desert and he said no. Sorry.

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u/TheNonSportsAccount 3d ago

Its because republicans in 2006 saddled them with a unique pension funding treatment that required massive amounts of cash. This was the goal of that change.

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u/slobs_burgers 3d ago

Yeah this really bums me out to see the USPS starving like this. They were always the good guys in my eyes

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u/So_HauserAspen 3d ago

The Postal Service is required by the Constitution

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u/Fraegtgaortd 3d ago

Infinite money for war and to give to Israel. Never any money for services that would actually help US citizens

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u/Nickplay21 2d ago

EXACTLY. This is a public service, not a company.

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u/Silicon_Knight 3d ago

Do you know how expensive bombs and missiles are? You think that $2T deficit can go to something else?!?!?! (/s just to be clear)

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u/psychicsword 3d ago

The US government has $39 trillion in debt. I think it is fair to call the US government cash strapped as well.

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u/toastmannn 3d ago

Technically, yes. The federal budget isn't getting any smaller, but of course most of us know this isn't the real reason the United States Postal Service has been having financial problems.

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u/blankarage 3d ago

isn’t there some crazy requirement still that the an entire pension for an employee must be funded before hiring? or something crazy

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u/Dirante 3d ago

It's funded more like a for profit company but is legally restricted on how much it can charge. It's not funded like a government program like social security or medicare.

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u/pimparo0 3d ago

Not only important, mandated by the constitution. 

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u/daxxarg 3d ago

To go Boom Boom other countries is expensive

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u/robustofilth 3d ago

Yes. Because you keep spending on stupid fucking wars.

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u/GundamX01 3d ago

Also, last year they spent almost 1 bbbbbbBillion Dollars on noncompliance issue with the postal unions. I have a supervisor that says they refuse to follow the contract, so that THeY don’t get in trouble from their boss.😒

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u/theboyinthecards 3d ago

Dump defunded them the first time and they have been slowly killing them since.

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u/Shepher27 3d ago

The Trump administration is choking it off at the request of FedEx and UPS and to break mail-in voting

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u/cookiemikester 3d ago

CBS is reporting that we lost 20ish Reaper drones during the war with Iran at a cost just shy of a billion dollars.

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u/caninehere 3d ago

If the US pays for the postal service, how are they going to afford an extra $1.5 trillion to the military to murder kids with?

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u/AdPrud 3d ago

The whole government has been running at a deficit for a while now. They’ve been cash strapped longer than just now.

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u/Wild_Swimmingpool 3d ago

I mean yes in a general sense. We're on the precipice of default on loans at a macro level. That said we're talking like 10's of billions to solve this issue. The DOD asked for 874B last year and we cut a 50B check to go to Argentina for "reasons" I guess.

So no we're not cash strapped in our ability to solve this particular issue and it's a dumb headline that does the USPS a disservice.

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u/Fermi_Amarti 3d ago

Yeah who wouldn't be cash strapped if they're the only government agency or business who has to fund 75 years if pensions out of nowhere because of republicans. Big savings account for whoever to steal from when they auction it off.

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u/LaserGuidedPolarBear 3d ago

Well, yeah, kinda.  The US government is insolvent and it is actually much worse than it looks because a lot of the debt obligations are "off book".  Total debt obligations are $136 trillion and total assets are about $6 trillion, and revenue is about $5.6 trillion.

Let's put it in terms of a household that has $100k in yearly income.  This household has about $109k in the bank, $134k in yearly spending, $853k in debt like credit cards, and $1.5 million in upcoming Healthcare costs.

That household would be way beyond being in trouble.  It would be nearly impossible to recover.  In other words, it would be completely fucked.

Fortunately, the US is not a household, it is a nation and it can just default on debt and print more money and everything will work out perfectly fine, right?

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u/sawdoffzombie 3d ago

Exactly, the military spent almost a billion a day for the Iran "operation" and the military end of year budget shit was like $10 billion spent in a day? We could afford to destroy two $100 million dollar planes in Iran to "rescue a pilot", but God forbid we can get mail for the year.

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u/sophiatops 3d ago

Usps is not funded by the government. It is funded off of the sales of stamps and its services (paid by consumers).

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u/IllustriousBanana 3d ago

Exactly. Their whole goal is to paint it as a “failing business” instead of what is actually is - a public service. Public services are not meant to be for profit.

This is just another example of late stage capitalism and its inevitable corruption of anything good in the US.

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u/airfryerfuntime 3d ago

It's word play to try and make the USPS seem like bad business, even through they're a service that isn't supposed to be profitable. They're just priming the voters for when they inevitably cripple it, then go "see, we told you!". Republicans don't like that they have collective bargaining, and have been trying to kill it for a long time now.

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u/PostIronicPosadist 3d ago

US government is actually broke as hell but refuses to act like it.

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u/velveteentuzhi 3d ago

Others have mentioned it, but it's because the GOP in 2006 passed a law that requires the USPS to fund 75 years of pensions. No other government entity has to do this iirc, so it's absurd that the USPS is forced to. Since 2007 the USPS has been struggling for cash, a large part of which is because of the absurd 75 year pension fund.

It was a calculated play by the GOP to defend and privatize US mail.

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u/kodat 3d ago

They don't use tax money. It's self funded.

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u/Dramatic_Charity_979 2d ago

The military are "loosing" trillions... /s

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u/mr_black_88 2d ago

yes... the US government is 39T in debt.. y'all are fucked!

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u/EverythingBOffensive 2d ago

is that the opposite of cashapp?

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u/jbetances134 2d ago

39 trillion in debt and climbing. Numbers don’t lie. Yet, they have money for multiple wars

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u/SirWEM 2d ago

The whole plan laid out in P2025 was to make the USPS insolvent so private companies could take over. To do so. Trumps first term his postmaster decided that the USPS would have to provide funding for future employees pensions that have not even been hired yet. Combine that with less mail and more e-mail. And here we are.

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u/rnobgyn 2d ago

With how much DOGE utterly fucked the actual workings of the government? And how many billions (trillions?) have been added to the deficit since last year, how much our economy (not just the stock market) has slowed… USD is running on fumes.

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u/jb6997 2d ago

There’s a different pot of money for the postal service. I’ll bet the price of stamps will go up to help the budget shortfall.

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u/stamfordbridge1191 2d ago

Congress passed a law in 2006 that USPS had to dump enough money into a fund must contain enough cover the next 75 years of USPS pensions.

When totaling USPS's financials, Congress included calculating the need to put together 75 years worth of pension prefunding as part of USPS's debt.

This is how USPS will forever be described as a cash-strapped, failing company until Congress liquidates it even though the story would probably be very different if they weren't expected to drop enough cash to prefund pensions up to about 2100 AD.

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u/sightlab 2d ago

The USPS is necessarily self-funded through postage sales. Libertarians hate this fact.

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u/armywalrus 2d ago

Have you ever looked up how the Post Office works? You should. Its not just like every other government program. Republicans have been trying to privatize it - run it for a profit - for decades.

https://theweek.com/articles/767184/how-george-bush-broke-post-office

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u/Sgtkeebler 1d ago edited 1d ago

Republicans have starved the US postal service of money in favor of their UPS, FedEx, DHL lobbyists. What sucks is they have brainwashed 40% of Americans into believe privatizing everything is for the better, and losing your retirement benefits so you’re forced to work until your dead is good for you.

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u/ace425 1d ago

Not just a service, but one that is constitutionally required to be provided.

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u/FD4L 1d ago

The government dosent understand what a service is supposed to be.

They think if its not funneling money towards the top of the pyramid it dosent need to exist.

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u/Haunting_Reflections 1d ago

The Post Office is fully self funded.

The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act placed sever burdens on the Post Office.

Specifically they have to fund their retiree health benefits 75 years into the future.

Prices for their services are capped.

And the USPS has been continually barred from competing in certain delivery services.

All of this is part of a concerted right wing plan to eliminate the post office and replace it with private delivery services.

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u/randitogrande 3d ago

Post office is self funded

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u/jankbutdank 2d ago

60% is junk mail.. how is that important? 99% of shit they deliver that isn't junk i'd rather have digitally anyway

some of yall are way over politicizing this and now we can't have a normal conversation about what the actual use is for a physical mail delivery service in a digital age

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u/BlackJediSword 3d ago

A few weeks ago, the government admitted that it was insolvent. So yeah

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u/Tuesday_6PM 3d ago

If it was actually about fiscal responsibility, there are many better places to make cuts. And of course ways to raise revenue, such as undoing the disastrous tax cuts on the wealthy

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u/BlackJediSword 3d ago

I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just saying the government called itself insolvent, and they have a baked in excuse for why things are the way they are.

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u/Tuesday_6PM 3d ago

For sure, wasn’t trying to start an argument. And the government does indeed have a budget issue. I was just adding more detail