Save This "Human Side of Government"

Yeah, calling your congress critter seems like a waste of time, and on many things that's true. But this is one that is so deeply embedded in the heart of America - established by Benjamin Franklin no less! - that call pressure may actually work.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

I’m a little labor-heavy today, but this caught my eye. We’ve been discussing the imminent demise of the US Postal Service, and the potential loss of 120,000 good-paying jobs. But most of the near-term funding “crisis” for the USPS comes from an unusual pre-funding mandate for retiree benefits. James Parks explains:

The USPS economic crisis is the result of a provision of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 that requires the Postal Service to pre-fund the health care benefits of future retirees—a burden no other government agency or private company bears.

The legislation requires the USPS to fund a 75-year liability over a 10-year period, and that requirement costs the USPS more than $5.5 billion per year. Guffey also pointed out that “the federal government is holding billions of dollars in postal overpayments to its pension accounts.”

All of the USPS losses over the past four years come from this mandate. You cannot find another organization in the world, AFAIK, that pre-funds 75 years of benefits over a 10-year period. And it’s not just the overpayments, it’s the opportunity costs of having to hold that much reserve capital that cannot be used when times are tough, or to invest in more attractive services. This results from a 2006 law that was one of the last time bombs of the Denny Hastert-Bill Frist Congress. That needs to change.

Today, rallies are being held from 4-5:30pm local time to support the postal service. The locations are available here. Just about every Congressional district in the country will see a rally.

Over time, the postal service could need some additional innovation, as mail volume reduces. I suggested they take on simple banking, and there are other ideas available. In the short-term, the pre-funding mechanism is the entire problem.
Hopefully the rallies will stick to this very simple message.

The rallies were Tuesday, but the matter is still before Congress. More details here.

John Nichols at The Nation:

When I started covering politics, Jennings Randolph was completing his tenure as the grand old man of Capitol Hill. The last sitting member of Congress to have arrived with Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 (as a member of the House), he was still sitting as a senator from West Virginia more than fifty years later. Perhaps as importantly, he had been born only a little more than a century after the Constitution was adopted.

Randolph recognized the connection between the Constitution and the New Deal, seeing in both an element of nation-building that focused on the affirmative role of government and the necessary role of the extension of the federal government that could be found in every hinterland hamlet and urban neighborhood: the post office.

Randolph was the great defender of the postal service that Ben Franklin had established and that the framers of the Constitution had seen fit to recognize as an essential project of the federal endeavor.

Randolph waxed poetic about the post office, respecting the local facility, be it a frame building at a country crossroads or a brick-and-mortar monument at the center of the largest city. It was, he said, more than a purveyor of packages and mail, more than a source of employment, more even than a meeting spot and focal point for community.

The post office, Randolph explained, was the friendly and honorable face of a government that could otherwise seem distant and, at times, ominous.

As a true Jeffersonian Democrat, and a faithful New Dealer, Randolph argued that those who understood the positive role that government could play in the lives and communities of Americans had better make the defense of the post office a high priority.

“When the post office is closed, the flag comes down,” he said. “When the human side of government closes its doors, we’re all in trouble.”

Liberals want to keep what's best about America, while improving what needs improving. Ben Franklin's postal service is a keeper.