Let’s assume for just one second that the US Post Office was a real business instead of a sink hole that sucks in large quantities of taxpayer money.
The CEO and the executives at the Post Office are uncomfortable about losing $25 million a day. By next year the business won’t be able to pay it’s 500,000 employees.
So, they presented a plan to the board of directors(Congress) so the business wouldn’t need to go to that board to get approval to get a loan(taxpayers, naturally).
That plan included closing about 50% of the mail processing centers and 3,000 unnecessary post offices, and letting local stores take packages and sell stamps. It included relaxing overnight delivery requirements for first-class mail. It included renegotiating no-layoff labor contracts to shrink the labor force faster. After all, if you close facilities and have to keep employees, it makes no sense. It meant ending Saturday delivery.
The board of directors didn’t like the plan. Democrats can’t cross the union and Republicans can’t close post offices in their home district.
So, the board said, no worries, business as usual, we’ll just borrow $34 billion and give it to you to keep losing $25 million a day. Or, more if your revenues keep going down as they have for the past several years. This was the senate board, the most dysfunctional group in my lifetime. One can only hope the other board, the house, will reject this wisdom. Of course, the first suggestion to come out of that board(Issa R, Calif.), is to create a new board. He would name it a federal control board to oversee postal finances. Isn’t that what the CEO and executives are asking approval to do?
Obama wants bigger government that can be run like the Post Office. I submit we need different people in government. People who feel slightly responsible for losing $25 million a day for taxpayers and recognize we can’t keep borrowing money from the Chinese to lose $25 million a day. Anyone who can’t put those two things together needs to go home and chase ambulances again. After all, John Edwards is out of that business now, there’s a void.
