It is great for governments to run responsible budgets, but this was such a unique constraint, it seems designed to strangle the USPS.

Which is to say "fund their pension plans."

It is my understand 75 years is the horizon beyond which no current worker's liability will cost anything. And the difference between 74 and 75 years funding is tiny compared to the difference between 1 and 2 years.

Everyone saying it's not fair because these "defined benefits" plans aren't required of the rest of the government seem to come down on the side that this is a good thing. It's really just an obligation for future taxes to make payments in lieu of current revenue to fund plans equal to the liabilities incurred today.

Saying something like this handicaps the USPS really means they should be able to freely obligate the taxpayer to future payments based on what they do today.

Funding liabilities as they are incurred is the proper thing to do, regardless of whether it is the USPS or some other aspect of the government. Pay as you go is insanity. Defining outcomes through legislation doesn't make it so.

Whether this is to handicap the USPS or not is entirely orthogonal to the issue of actually paying for the promises being made, rather than promising that someone in the future will pay for it.

https://www.congress.gov/109/plaws/publ435/PLAW-109publ435.p...

https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...

> The Trump Task Force acknowledged that without the costs imposed by the Post-Retirement Health Care Mandate, USPS would today be profitable on an operating basis.

I missed the announcement where they were opening the subsidized parcel delivery to all businesses, not just ones owned by people with the last name of Bezos that start with an A and end with an N.

If you fully fund the pensions before privatization, you can simultaneously claim that privatization is necessary (look! they're running out of money!) and radically reduce costs once you do privatize (all the pensions are pre-paid, so you can stop contributing to the fund and extract profits for a few decades before you have problems).

This zip code subscription is part of the same plan: Get people used to paying for data from the USPS so it has an additional income stream after privatization.

"Contrary to statements made by some employee groups and other stakeholders, PAEA did not require USPS to prefund 75 years of retiree health benefits" https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-13-112.pdf

Also the 2022 Postal Service Reform Act eliminated the prefunding and ~$57 billion of overdue payments, but USPS finances were still dogshit afterwards: USPS revenue was $80 billion and expenses were $89 billion in FY2024

Like when you buy food you like instead of the cheapest calories, this can make financial sense, because you value the preferred food more than the additional cost.

At around $20 a household projected loss for 2027, you wouldn't have to try very hard to do better than dismissing discussion of the value it does or doesn't bring.

It doesn't make financial sense because Congress has capped how much the garbage manufacturers have to pay.