Trump Orders Audit of Postal Service After Suggesting Amazon Is To Blame For Their Troubles (politico.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Postal Service to undergo an audit Thursday evening, a move that comes after president's repeated claims that Amazon is fleecing the USPS through alleged unfair business practices. "The USPS is on an unsustainable financial path and must be restructured to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout," reads the executive order Trump issued shortly before 9 p.m. While not explicitly mentioned in the order, the president has hammered e-commerce giant Amazon in recent weeks and alleged that the company and its CEO Jeff Bezos are driving the USPS into the ground. "I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy," Trump wrote on Twitter on April 3. "Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer." According to the executive order, a task force comprise of top officials, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who would chair the group, will lead the investigation into the USPS' finances and will be required to issue recommendations and a final report no later than early August.

Comments

Pension

[Gilgaron]

Hasn't it already been pretty well established that the USPS is doing just fine, but the accounting practices congress forces them to use for their pension funding make it look bad on paper?

Re: Pension

[olsmeister]

If you want to pre-sort the mail you send, deliver it to the postal sorting center rather than having it picked up at your house, and give up the requirement to have it delivered as soon as possible, then maybe you too can get better rates.

Re: Pension

[AvitarX]

It's not that low.

Pre-sorting saves about $0.06 each on first class mail.

You can save another $0.15 going with lower class (standard) mail, but it can't contain a personal communication (even when a company does it) because they don't really out much effort into time or making certain someone gets it.

For that $0.06 discount, they are gaurenteed the address is good too, and that gaurenteed that their machines can read the address.

Re:Pension

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Yep, here's an explanation from the USPS themselves and a nice analogy to illustrate just how unfair the current attack on the USPS is: https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/b...

Re:Pension

[MightyYar]

The criticism that they did it too fast is fair (10 years), but the change was absolutely justified and should be extended to the rest of government. Private companies have not been able to promise unfunded pensions for decades - it's a moral issue that the government is allowed to continue this practice. If you want to promise people future benefits, then actually fund those promises. Otherwise you are simply burdening your children with future obligations, and making no guarantee that they will keep your empty promises in any event. It's a lose for future taxpayers and it's a lose for the employees. The only people who win are the politicians who keep "costs down", and union leaders who can claim empty "wins".

Re:Pension

[plopez]

1) Often state governments have the same arrangement. Note if the USPS is leasing space they do pay taxes indirectly.

2) That depends. If it is leased then once again they do so indirectly. Note also they had to purchase property in the cases where it is owned by them.

3) Yes

4) Unknown. Probably not though. They have the famous case where the court rules "the power to tax is the power to destroy". But neither do states pay Federal tax. Oh, and neither do corporations.

The US Postal Service is mandated by the US Constitution. They provide a valuable and efficient service to *all* Americans in the US. Not just the profitable locations.

This is just another way to give a monopoly to one company.

I predict this will destroy commerce via mail.

Re:Pension

[greythax]

And third trimester "abortions" are almost universally because we still call pulling an already dead baby out of it's mother an "abortion". Your hair is a collection of cells, but cutting it isn't murder.

Re:Pension

[Rick Schumann]

The US Postal Service is mandated by the US Constitution. They provide a valuable and efficient service to *all* Americans in the US. Not just the profitable locations.

Great point, really. Otherwise we end up with the 'gentrification' of the mail service. Imagine this: neighborhoods full of poor minorities suddenly don't get mail service anymore because it's 'unprofitable', being forced to drive to some far-away facility to pick up what was mail service to their door (assuming they can even get there at all). Or worse, they have to pay some sort of 'delivery surcharge' because they're not on 'normal routes', putting more financial stress on people already living paycheck to paycheck. Is this really the America we want to create?

Re:Pension

[Daemonik]

name a SINGLE government agency that is efficient at what it does.

Medicare and Medicaid provide health care coverage at a vastly reduced administrative cost compared to insurance companies, and actually pays their bills on time without dragging their feet to the point your doctor is about to sue you before admitting that yes, you are covered for that procedure.

Re: Pension

[phantomfive]

Also, every government expense is basically a rounding error next to Medicare, SS, and the military. You could completely get rid of the postal service, get rid of every other inefficiency in government, and it would make very little difference in the overall budget (especially the growing deficit). People argue very emotionally about this topic but it's not really worth getting emotional about.

Re:Do the reasons actually matter?

[Oswald McWeany]

I rather suspect that he has access to really good base information on the subject

I'm sure he has access to more information about USPS than the rest of us. I'm also sure he's not looking at that information because it would require reading, which he is apparently unwilling to do. He is most likely basing his complaints about USPS on his personal grudge against Jeff Bezos and some misinformation he heard on Fox News, since personal grudges and TV propaganda are the same tools he uses to make all his other decisions.

But rather than ever admit he's wrong he will make up false facts and spend the remaining two and a half years of his presidency bashing Amazon.

Re:Do the reasons actually matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump doesn't act on accurate information, he acts on whatever information supports his views. Bezos has pissed off Trump, mostly because he runs WaPo. Trump wants to find ammo that supports anything that will hurt Bezos. That is to say, he's witch-hunting Amazon, claiming it's bad for the US taxpayer, because it supports his feelings.

He might have more information than the rest of us but so what? He only pays attention to that part of it that supports his feelings. 'The USPS is in financial trouble' - well that's true, but that's due to its pension plan, not the profitable parcel post delivery Amazon uses. Trump's perfectly willing to ignore that part though, because it doesn't support his goals.

Do the audit!

[Locke2005]

When the results come out, it will prove Trump is a dotard that has no idea what he is talking about. And the anti-Trump media will be certain to publicize that. I expect the report will come out right before the 2018 election.