Does the postal service recieve tax money? Or does it survive merely on the money it makes from packages and letters delivered?
“Since its reorganization into an independent organization, the USPS has become self-sufficient and has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters. However, it is currently borrowing money from the U.S. Treasury to pay its deficits.”
That’s very interesting to know. I assumed they got taxpayer money each year. I wonder how ‘minor’ those subsidies are, though. Disabled and overseas voters? As in like once-every-two-years elections?
I also wonder about that tiny little word “directly”, as in “has not directly received.”
Of course, they have a govt granted monopoly, they have powers of eminent domain, they have sovereign immunity, and they are hugely succesful in their real goal: giving jobs and pensions to people. Their service is horrible, they project to lose 130 billion dollars by 2020, and they will still be in business. How is this possible? Where is the money coming from to pay their workers and put gas in their cars if they lost $8.5 billion this year and about half that again last year? It’s not like they have huge reserves in some vault; they have zero reserves [except for paying fat pensions]. Obviously they are getting money from somebody. And it’s not from the Salvation Army. It’s “indirectly” from the taxpayers.
Do you know what the source is? I wish there were some kind of chart showing actually which people/companies/agencies/etc. received specific amounnts of money and from where they received it.
There’s a pdf here, a 5 page excerpt from the federal budget dealing with the post office. I could not wade through it.
Financing.—The activities of the U.S. Postal Service are fin-
anced from the following sources: (1) mail and services revenue;
(2) reimbursements from Federal and non-Federal sources; (3)
proceeds from borrowing; (4) interest from U.S. securities and
other investments; and (5) appropriations by the Congress. All
receipts and deposits are made to the Postal Service Fund and
are available without fiscal year limitation for payment of all expenses incurred, retirement of obligations, investment in cap-
ital assets, and investment in obligations and securities.
Separate legislation also increased the Postal Service’s statutory .
borrowing authority beginning in 1991. Section 2005 of title 39,
United States Code, as amended, increased the Postal Service’s
borrowing authority by $2.5 billion in 1991 for a revised ceiling
of $12.5 billion and an additional $2.5 billion in 1992 for a revised
total ceiling of $15 billion. The total annual increase in net out-
standing debt was also increased to annually grow by up to $2.0 billion in obligations issued for the purpose of capital improve-
ments and by $1.0 billion for the purpose of paying operating
expenses.
Etc etc etc. can’t make head nor tail of it. Like who lends them all that money?
I don’t understand how that’s supposedly the USPS being independently successful. The media is a joke.