But the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the Postal Service’s problems. Postal workers receive federal benefits, but … So what Mnuchin and some of these others want are basically to change the Postal Service in ways that will cut its costs, that will increase its prices, and kind of shrink its footprint. I feel like that’s something a lot of people don’t quite understand. Like any non-profit, it must have enough income to cover expenses. Absolutely. So since the pandemic started, I have to imagine there have been significant changes to your routine, right? The postage rate was based on the number of sheets in the letter and the distance it would travel. Mr. Johnson, who had previously supported allocating funds to prop up the agency, said that data received by his staff suggested actual revenues from mid-March to mid-April were down less than 6 percent compared to the year before. Regardless of whether or not Democrats want them to take them or their own workforce wants them to take them, it may well be that what the president has finally succeeded in doing is putting a kind of like-minded or sympathetic leadership team in place, and that’s what it takes. The Postal Service adapting to this economy right now surely won’t be easy. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who is on the oversight committee, painted a dire picture of the agency’s operations in a Thursday afternoon tweet. Here’s how. In a recent email blast, Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Republicans were trying “to dismantle” the Postal Service, and with it, the jobs of hundreds of thousands of postal employees, as well as the connections between rural, poor and tribal areas to the economy. And when you say last mile, what do you mean? revenues have recently improved — so much so that this April’s revenues were close to equal to those in April 2019.”. There’s a lot of essential needs there that we’re meeting now. Nick, tell me about the history of the U.S. The Post Office Department was created in 1792 and became a Cabinet department in 1872. A guy asked me at church, he said he was following his package by one of our competing delivery companies, and he was following it to each one of their hubs and their facilities, and then all of a sudden it said it’s at the post office. Mr. Mnuchin has begun preliminary conversations with the Postal Service’s leaders about the terms of a loan of up to $10 billion that the Treasury Department is authorized to extend to the agency. I know I’ve read some things about us not charging enough for some of the package business, but the Postal Service is not a for-profit private company like some of the others. “Their goal has always been to privatize, to make a profit off the Postal Service for private purposes,” Ms. Pelosi added, referring to Republicans. It’s self-sustainable. “The USPS and the mailing industry it supports ($1.6 trillion in sales and 7.3 million private sector workers) is every bit as important as the aviation industry,” National Association of Letter Carriers President Frederic Rolando said in a late March statement. A functioning Postal Service is also a prerequisite for establishing a national vote-by-mail program for the elections in the fall, a priority for Democrats that some Republicans oppose. We cannot make assumptions that just because the disease is on the way down now that it’s going to keep going down and we’re going to get a number of months to get ready for a second wave. But as Washington begins to battle over the next round of coronavirus relief funding, the United States Postal Service, for many the most familiar face of the federal government, has landed improbably at the center of one of the most bitter political disputes over who should be rescued, and at what cost. The Postal Service traces its roots back basically as far or farther than the country itself. In a Washington Post article on the U.S. Around the world, the new year looks a lot like the old one so far. And why is that? David C. Williams, the vice chairman of the Trump-appointed board of governors and a former postal inspector general, was so uncomfortable over the talks with the Treasury Department that he resigned last month, concerned about the politicization of an organization that is normally unaffected by partisanship, according to people familiar with his thinking. We own the Post office and all its failure. Nick, how does this approach from the White House sit with congressional Republicans who presumably represent a lot of Americans who like the Postal Service? The Post Office charges us for postage and … To the Editor: Contrary to popular belief, the Post Office is not government-funded. The World Health Organization is warning that even before a second wave of infections may arrive in the fall, there could be a surge of infections in the coming weeks as measures to contain the virus are lifted in places like the U.S. The post office (usually in the general store) was usually the only place open on Sunday. “Eckshually,” he said, donning a fedora over his scraggly facial hair and small beady eyes, “everyone is wrong and the post office is not taxpayer-funded.” Except that the post office is taxpayer-funded : Democrats and U.S. Post Office Counters Ltd was created as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Post Office corporation in 1986. The Post office’s history stretches back 250 years. And then a few years into this trend, Congress makes another consequential decision. Derek, why do you think it is that the federal government is offering financial assistance to many private companies across the U.S. economy and not to the Postal Service? And I’m carrying a lot more essential needs. | (Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad) World Vision should have known that the Islamic group it funded and worked with in Sudan was dedicated to funding terrorism, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee said in a new report. Post Office branches, along with the Royal Mail delivery service, were formerly part of the General Post Office and after 1969, the Post Office corporation. The company is owned by UK Government Investments. it is funded and regulated by the government. This burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation. What the coronavirus could mean for America’s favorite government agency. The British government didn’t mind, because by 1760, the postal operation in the colonies was profitable for the first time. “We are for the public having the Postal Service meet the public interest, not some special interest.". Postal business is transacted through some 47,000 post offices, contract stations, and branches in 42,000 U.S. communities. “It’s a lifeline for so many of our communities,” he said. And the private companies, the Walmarts and the Amazons, and of course, UPS and FedEx, they bring their parcels to us to deliver what we call the last mile. It’s too drastic an increase all at once. Derek, I want to start by asking you if you could tell me about your first ever memory of the Postal Service. Postal Service (USPS) had largely completed Post Office Structure Plan's (POStPlan) implementation prior to a 2014 POStPlan arbitration decision and expected millions in cost savings. I really hope president Trump take a look at this and realize it's hurting business it's hurting their growth and people realize that the post office could be so much more. And last week, the board of governors announced that it had selected a North Carolina businessman and major Republican donor to be the next postmaster general, replacing a career postal employee with someone who is expected to be more sympathetic to the administration’s views. I got to know him. If this new perception of the Post Office is now mainstream, that it is a “subsidized government service” rather than a quasi-private entity expected to … In a place like where you grew up, that is the Postal Service — one man. The budget status of the U.S. Wow. But Congress sees on the horizon an issue with this very large, relatively well-paid federal workforce hitting retirement age. Today, postal employees must cope with an ever-increasing avalanche of mail which, in the past decade, has quadrupled in volume. Absolutely. Paul Ratje/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Armed with a new report from the Government Accountability Office on the Postal Service’s long-term structural challenges, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, accused Democrats of trying to let the agency off the hook for mistakes that had nothing to do with the coronavirus crisis. Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? It was one of the original functions of Government, mentioned in the Constitution. After rumors flared that Trump may be heading to Scotland on Jan. 19, the country’s leader says he will not be allowed in. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office later ruled that ... the president can immediately freeze the funding … And so it gives him significant new leverage to try and put in place some of these long-held ambitions that he has for the Postal Service, most explicitly this question of rates. That it’s getting its packages delivered far too cheaply, and that Bezos is being enriched off of this government service. See you tomorrow. I’m good. One, there’s a big difference between modest changes and re-evaluating a contract to increase prices maybe 10 percent or 15 percent, I don’t know, and what President Trump is talking about. Yes. I think that’s a fair assumption. Though 90 percent of its income is derived from the sale of stamps, the post office is also the largest savings bank in the country, and the largest agency with a transfer of money. And I go into the office each morning, I gather up my mail, and gather my packages, and I go to the street with it and start my route. The future of the mail may hang in the balance. So it actually starts with The Washington Post, the newspaper that the president feels has covered him too critically, too unfairly. If they don’t raise the price, I’m not signing anything. 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