ABC News has just reported that an obscure federal law has been driving the demise of the United States Postal Service:
“The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act”
This bill, signed into law by President Bush, held that the Postal Service had to set aside health benefits funds 75 years in advance. Furthermore, it had to save those funds in the first 10 years following the passage of the law. For the past seven years, the Postal Service has set aside $5 billion every year into the health benefits fund. Forty-four billion dollars has been invested, but because of less business, a hostile business climate, and the diminished business savvy of government institutions, the Postal Service is bankrupt.
In 2006, it was bringing in hefty profits, with unprecedented levels of mail funneling in and out and all around. The rise of online payments, internet banking, and private carriers, like Amazon.com, began cutting into the Postal Service’s bottom line. The Great Recession made a declining industry struggle all the more. The healthcare funding demands, still ongoing, have pushed a burdened government agency not just into the red, but may have Americans hopping red with rage because the post office no longer will ring once, let alone twice, on Saturdays. This past year, the post office lost $16 billion. More than 50 percent are due to the mandated health benefits fund. Even though the postal workers can count on future healthcare, can they count on having a job in the near future, especially since their employer is dying to provide them coverage? Can anyone count on ever getting his mail in the future?
Aiming a Finger at Guess Who?
Progressive critics will argue that limited government Republicans advanced “The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act” as a poison pill to kill the post office outright. However, three Democrats co-sponsored the bill, including U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose) and Santa Monica Bay Congressman Henry Waxman.
The declining revenue dissipating from the post office not only has forced a decline in service, but now post offices around the country are forced to close, including the Fifth Street Post Office in Santa Monica. In the past few months, Santa Monica activists have cheered Congressman Waxman because he has written a number of letters protesting the closure of the New Deal-era post office. Furthermore, Waxman championed the private intervention of a local film producer, who stepped in to save the Venice Post Office.
However, the turn of events which took the the Postal Service from thriving to striving to barely surviving, reside not just with the cutting competition that has eaten away the mail stock from decades past, but the legislation Congressman Waxman endorsed as a sop to the following interest groups who contributed to his campaigns in 2006:
The American Postal Workers Union
The National Association of Postmasters
The National Rural Letter Carriers Association
What will the voters in his district say, now that one of the chief sources of debt, deficit, and decimation of the Postal Service, and by extension the Fifth Street Post Office, are due in greater part to Congressman Waxman's aid to these special interests?
Waxman Talks Back
Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has been investigating the waste and fraud perpetrated in the Postal Service program, along with the growing liabilities that have loomed over this department. Unlike Democratic leaders, including Congressman Waxman, the Republicans in Congress have taken every step to prevent the default and taxpayer bailout of the post office.
Congressman Waxman still defends the law, but this past Friday, he admitted:
“Congress should strengthen the Postal Service and put it on a long-term path to sustainability.”
Under his tenure, with his blessing, Congress passed legislation that doomed the post office to a trudged trek of unsustainability. Now, his signature legislation, Obama-WaxmanCare, has driven up healthcare costs and weighted down the costs of these benefits all the more.
For a Congressman who decided that steroid abuse in baseball merited more attention, for a Congressman who spent hours picking on Big Tobacco CEOs, who decided to investigate lead in toys instead of investigating and invigorating the Brentwood VA, his utter neglect, and thus his enabling, the hastened decline of the post office is just inexcusable. It should stoke enough outrage that even Santa Monica residents will throw up their hands in resigned disgust with the Congressman who has taken them for granted for so long.
Not just for the “hidden” costs (which we would learn about when the Democrats passed Obama-WaxmanCare) now made plain from Obama-WaxmanCare; not just from the higher premiums, the declining access, and the taxes that were never supposed to happen in the (Un)Affordable Care Act; but also for the bankrupted state of the post office, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darryl Issa must subpoena Congressman Waxman and demand that he explain why he supported legislation that has decimated a key government agency, one which liberals of all stripes once championed as one of many examples in which government provides “good” service in competition with the private sector.
Contact Waxman's office, and give him a piece of your mind (or mail), too.
Arthur Christopher Schaper is a writer and blogger on issues both timeless and timely; political, cultural, and eternal. A lifelong resident of Southern California, he currently lives in Torrance. He may be contacted at arthurschaper@hotmail.com, aschaper1.blogspot.com and at asheisministries.blogspot.com. Also see waxmanwatch.blogspot.com.
