U.S. Postal Service Has Not Earned a Profit in Almost a Decade-Lost $51.7 billion since 2007...
U.S. Postal Service Has Not Earned a Profit in Almost a
Decade
The government-owned enterprise has lost $51.7 billion
since 2007
BY: Ali Meyer September 22, 2015 1:03 pm
The United States Postal Service has lost $51.7 billion
between 2007 and 2014 and has not earned a profit since 2006, according to a
report from the Tax Foundation.
“There is no turnaround in sight,” states the report.
“The Postal Service will almost certainly register another multibillion dollar
loss in 2015; for the first two quarters of 2015, it suffered a net loss of
$2.8 billion.”
In addition, the report finds that USPS has failed to
make legally required payments to the U.S. Treasury and will default on its
statutory obligations, which include the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit
Fund.
“Although the Postal Service has not yet received an
explicit taxpayer bailout, it has failed to meet its legal obligations for
several years in a row,” the report states. “The odds that a bailout will
eventually become unavoidable increase as the sea of red ink continues rising.”
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that
the Postal Service’s unfunded liabilities grew 62 percent from 2007 to 2013.
The Tax Foundation says it is doubtful that the Postal Service will be able to
meet its obligations.
The report says that if the enterprise had more
operational flexibility, its losses would not be as large.
“While the Service does have greater operational
discretion than many federal agencies, it has much less than a typical
private-sector business because Congress often micromanages its actions,” the
report says.
While Gallup found in 2014 that 72 percent of their
respondents said USPS is doing a good job and only 8 percent regard its
performance as poor, the report finds that there have been issues with service.
In 2014, delivery-time targets fell short seven out of
eight times and in 2015, on-time delivery from January to March fell to 63.1
percent, down from 84.1 percent in the same quarter last year.
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