Why the Postal Service is under attack...

Finally!!

Someone has spelled out exactly why the USPS seems to be bleeding money.

Below is the transcript from the Ed Schultz show that took place Thursday evening.

Please read (especially starting at the fourth paragraph) and hopefully you will understand what is going on...

TRANSCRIPT- Ed SCHULTZ SHOW, MSNBC, August 11, 2011


SCHULTZ: How much do you know about the United States Postal Service? You hear a lot of negative comments about their finances, don`t you? Well, earlier today, I spoke to the postal workers in Orlando, Florida. These are men and women who are in the same boat as public employees in states like Wisconsin and Verizon workers throughout the country who are on strike right now.

They`re fighting for their jobs, their rights and their futures. The United States Postal Service announcing today that it wants to reduce its work force by 20 percent. But layoffs of that nature are prohibited by union contracts.

That`s where the Republicans step right on in. GOP Congressman Darryl Issa, who has got a lot of power, from California, is drawing from a familiar playbook. He introduced a Tea Party friendly bill that would allow an oversight committee to cut Postal Worker wages, slash benefits and end protections against layoffs.

But the financial problems facing the Postal Service -- and I want you to hear this -- were created largely not by you and me, but by the Congress. You see, in 2006, a law passed was forcing the Postal Service to provide 75 years worth of pension funding within a 10-year window. Who the hell else has to do that?

Independent firms estimate that the United States Postal Service already overpaid the fund by 50 to 80 billion dollars. So even though the Post Office made 226 million dollars in the first quarter profits for this year, 2011, all of that money went to the Congressional mandated fund.

You know what they`re trying to do, folks? They are trying to shut down the United States Postal Service. They want to privatize this, as well. And I want to make it very clear tonight that not one tax dollar goes to running the United States Postal Service. It is all operated and funded through the stamps that you and I purchase.

Joining me tonight is Cliff Guffey. He is the president of the American Postal Workers Union. Mr. Guffey, great to have you with us tonight.

CLIFF GUFFEY, AMERICAN POSTAL WORKERS UNION: Good to be with you, Ed.

SCHULTZ: Did I say anything wrong? Or what I said, was that accurate? Can you add to it?

GUFFEY: That`s very accurate, Ed. The Postal Service has overpaid into their civil service retirement fund billions of dollars. You`ve got to remember, that`s money that`s withheld from the workers and was matched by postage revenue that we, through our productivity, have earned for the Postal Service.

And that was given to Congress to prepay our retirement funds. Well, these actuaries, these independent actuaries have actually said -- one said there is at least 50 billion overpaid in this one fund. And there`s 75 billion paid into it by the other actuary.

This is done by the Office of the Inspector General and by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

SCHULTZ: So what does -- what could they do to reverse this, to balance your books a heck of a lot better, because you are a profitable organization. The United States Postal Service has been profitable this year. What has to happen?



GUFFEY: Even with that money drained off into our retirement system, the Postal Service was required to prefund our health insurance into retirement by five point something billion dollars a year for the last five or six years. Without the 20 or 30 billion dollars going into that fund, the Post Office has been profitable.

Now what the Congress wants us to continue doing is continue to put money into these retirement funds and to keep prefunding. But if they would credit the Postal Service with that money, that`s actually the workers` money.

SCHULTZ: Sure.

GUFFEY: The Postal Service could pay off its debt. It could pay all the future deposits that are necessary and have some operating cash to get through this very trying time.

SCHULTZ: So, your mandate --

GUFFEY: -- this recession that`s been created by -- the Congress is trying to blame the workers. That`s what irritates me. They`re blaming the workers for the problems of the country, which is there`s not enough commerce in this country because they allow the system to set up to move all the work overseas.

SCHULTZ: Why is the Congress coming forward, saying they want to -- the Postal Service wants to cut the workforce 20 percent. And they`re talking about five-day delivery service. Why do they want to do that?

GUFFEY: Because they have no -- they`ve gone to the Congress and asked the Congress to release these funds. They say, oh no, we can`t release these funds, because if they release the funds back to the Postal Service, it would show how underfunded the rest of the government is. And it would be another deficit just to show how badly and poorly the rest of the government is run.

They put tax dollars into it. It`s run poorly. Where postage dollars have come in, it`s been run properly. They want to take my retirement funds, that I put in and the Postal Service put in, to pay the retirements for the other federal agencies that they haven`t funded.

SCHULTZ: Wow.

GUFFEY: That`s just totally improper.

SCHULTZ: It is improper. You guys don`t use any tax dollars. It`s all from stamps and all from services that you sell, correct?

GUFFEY: That`s correct. They`re taking our money and using it for other things in the federal government.

SCHULTZ: Do you think they want to privatize? Do you think there are some in Congress that want to get rid of the Postal Service and all go privatization?

GUFFEY: I believe there are some people. You got remember, the Postal Service still makes 70 billion dollars a year. Seventy billion dollars worth of business comes into the Postal Service.

And it supports a trillion-dollar industry out there, paper manufacturing, envelopes, cards, various companies that the Postal Service supports.

SCHULTZ: And reducing it to a five-day delivery service would hurt our certainly economy. There`s a lot of studies out there that show that.

GUFFEY: Medicines and what have you. We would find a way to get the medicines to the individuals. But we want to serve the American people. The Postal Service is respected by 80 percent of the public. Congress, 20 percent. I`ll be -- I hope the public stays on our side in this, to know that we want to provide a service and we want to be there to help the public.

SCHULTZ: I`m going to do more on this. I use your service every day. Cliff Guffey, thanks so much.

GUFFEY: Thank you.

SCHULTZ: President of the American Postal Workers Union.

Well, that's it for now.

See you soon.