How Congress Bankrupted the Postal Service in 3 Easy Steps

With all the confusion in the news media about the U.S. Postal Service’s financial problems, finally one writer nails it on the head. In “Next Washington Debacle: The Broke Postal Service” at Seeking Alpha, usnews.com columnist Rick Newman succinctly summarizes “how Congress has made the mail service a national embarrassment:”

1) Hamstringing its finances: “The postal service faces unusual limits on its ability to manage costs, such as an obligation imposed by a 2006 law to ’prefund’ a large portion of its retiree healthcare plan, instead of a more typical pay-as-you-go arrangement.” Newman doesn’t mention that the prefunding is an accounting