Monday, June 2, 2014

"Disillusioned" a RANT

I didn’t think I could be any more disillusioned by our lawmakers. But somehow "they" always manage to surprise me. The Postmaster General has been lobbying to get rid of Saturday delivery for more than a year now. He thinks it will put the Postal Service on the right track with their budget. (I don’t, but that is for another rant.)

Today I get this in my e-mail, "On Friday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) released a plan to temporarily finance the Highway Trust Fund by using the elimination of six-day mail delivery as a "pay for"—Washington-speak for "budget offset."

Where exactly do "they" think the money will come from? The USPS Postmaster General says it needs the funds to run the Postal Service. The government doesn’t pay anything toward to USPS budget so there are no funds there. The Postal Service doesn’t pay any taxes. The people that mail the letters and packages and use other postal services pay for what they use.

Or is it just as I suspected all along . . . "they" want to use the Postal Service as their "piggy bank." There is all the money "they" made the Postal Service pay to fund the retirees health benefits for the next 75 years in ten years time. It’s a big pot of money just sitting out there not doing anything, so to speak. I guess "they" have already forgotten that the Postal Service is already "off-budget" so "they" can balance the budget.

How many pots-of-money do "they" think the Postal Service has anyway? I’ll tell you, one, and every bit of it is needed to keep the United States Postal Service a viable institution.

Our Congress has voted down, every time, money to fund the Highway Trust Fund. How do "they" think the Highway Trust Fund will do what needs to be done? This business of being revenue neutral or whatever they call this need to offset everything is a bunch of hogwash. Which Congressperson will be the first to say, my state can do without [fill in the blank with their favorite "pork barrel" idea] so the Highway Trust Fund can obtain the funds necessary to keep going. Just as I thought. NONE of them.


Please let your Congressperson know you think this is a stupid idea. The next thing you know "they" will be eliminating another day of mail delivery to fund the next thing and then the next.

Let’s keep six days of delivery and let Congress find the money elsewhere.

End of RANT. (For now.)

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