that the USPS has pre-funded retirement benefits for employees that aren't even born yet? That's right, they have been forced to set aside so much money that they have done what would cripple and break any business in the world. No company, public or private, has done anything even remotely like this.

And you wonder why they are struggling. Simply an adjustment to this requirement, or giving back the excessive amount the post office has been forced to sock away, and it would be doing fine.

Or simply giving back the money Congress took from the post office when it was making a profit, and it would be o.k.

After reading up on this, it certainly seems that someone is trying to set the USPS up for failure.

Nice that some people do research for facts. Sara Dunlap was a Brainerd Citizen of the Year. She has my respect. She volunteers everywhere in the community.

Is that one of the "true facts" that Dunlap referred to...or is it a false fact? Just curious.

...defined benefit funding. I did not know that. Ms. Dunlap may be a wonderful person, but she apparently knows nothing about the $88 billion in unfunded future retirement liabilities that the USPS owes. Her facts are incomplete, and therefore, deeply flawed.

No, he was not citizen of the year. He was nominated and chosen, but the honor was pulled when it was revealed he had a criminal charge against him. No one could have known that earlier when nominations were sent in.

To infer that Citizens of the Year are devalued because of this one instance is a cheap blow. Feed the hungry, take care of the elderly, and show up to help others before you criticize this woman.

Sigh....

What does your link have to do with the unfunded retirement benefit liabilities, Snack? Are you trying to show that they can't afford to fund their liabilities because because e-mail has rendered obsolete most of what they have done profitably in the past?

Fine. If they can't afford to fund the defined benefit plans they offer, they need to stop offering those plans. They shouldn't sit back waiting for a financial collapse and expect the taxpayers to bail them out.

...I'm just saying that Holder claims he wasn't aware, which means he is a self-professed incompetent.

If Congress impeaches and convicts Holder of an impeachable offense, he is automatically removed from office. The DOJ deals with criminal prosecutions.

Do I need to do your reading for you? How about this:

The Postal Service wants to restructure retiree health benefits payments to “pay-as-you-go,” comparable to what is used by the rest of the federal government and the majority of the private sector.

and this:

The Postal Service is fully committed and has paid in full all current retirement and pension obligations. The prefunding requirement is in addition to the billions of dollars spent every year to honor our commitment to current retirees.

and this:

The OIG found that the Postal Service has over-funded its CSRS obligation. This overfunding led to the creation of a Trust Fund that the Postal Service finances through prepayment of retiree health benefits. The Postal Service will seek to address these overpayments.

So, why isn't this addressed? If they are making overpayments (which they are, way beyond what could even be considered conservative) then why isn't the formula being fixed? Is it so the USPS, which has NOT been funded by taxpayer dollars since 1982, can bank that money for Congress to steal again, like Congress did in the past?

By the way, wouldn't that money have come in handy right now for a rainy day fund if Congress had not pilfered it?

I'm all for taking care of obligations and being responsible, but something is seriously wrong here when everyone agrees that the formula is flawed, yet won't fix it.

Here is the GAO document that states the USPS retiree health plan had $53 billion in unfunded liabilities as of 2009 (currently it has unfunded liabilities of $40 billion+, thanks to pre-funding).

www.gao.gov/new.items/d10455.pdf

Here is an article that debunks the funding for 75 years myth:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432/The_Truth_About_The_Post_Office_s_Financ...

Here is the government document that explains why there is the misunderstanding about it:

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/_Blogs/NetNe...

Here is a key excerpt from the document:

"The confusion over 75 years may be due to an "accounting" and not an "actuarial or funding" issue. They only have to fund the future liability of their current or former workforce. This would include some actuarial estimate about the mortality rates of their current workers (I.e. how long they live). So a 25 year old worker would have an average life expectancy (from birth) of 78.7 years. Thus, they would have to project future retiree health benefits for this individual up to about 54 years in the future.

But for accounting purposes they must estimate the future liability over a 75 year period (according to OPM financial accounting guidelines). In this case, they would make some assumptions about new entrants into the workforce and addresses your second question. "

First, you misunderstood the statement about people who are not yet born being considered for reporting purposes. They are being considered for accounting purposes only, not for funding purposes. Only current and former employees are considered for funding purposes. Can we at least agree on that, since that is what the official link says?

Second, the link you provided deals with the retirement plan, not the retiree medical benefits. In 2006, when legislation was passed, the unfunded liability for RETIREE MEDICAL was $76 billion. By not accounting for this liability (which, BTW, is the same sort of financial chicanery that is going on with Social Security and Medicare) it provided an overly rosy picture of the economic well-being of the post office.

Third, these are benefits that have been promised to employees, and it is the responsibility of the Post Office to provide them. If they don't fund them now, given the sorry financial state of the USPS, the taxpayers will have to fund them, and that simply isn't fair.

Fourth, hardly any private companies offer retiree health benefits, but if they did, and they failed, the taxpayers would not be on the hook to bail out the plan. That's not to say that retiree health expenses shouldn't be funded, just as regular retirement benefits are, because of the high likelihood that there might not be money to pay them if they aren't funded, and I suspect most companies do a substantial amount of pre-funding precisely for that reason.

Fifth, let's face it, the real problem with the Post Office isn't prefunding the medical benefits they've promised to their employees, it's the fact that they are losing money every single year and taking big loans from the treasury. They need to be completely restructured and operated in a profitable way. This means shutting down Post Offices that are low volume, bringing pay schedules in line with the private sector (which would mean cuts) stopping Saturday delivery, and I, personally, would highly recommend an end to the universal delivery requirement. If a person wants to live in the middle of nowhere, they should drive to the nearest Post Office to pick up their mail.