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July 28, 2020
Honorable Senator Blunt & Honorable Senator Hawley:
PLEASE SUPPORT SENATE BILL S. 4174
Currently I have the great privilege to serve as President of the St Louis BMC Local 7043 in Hazelwood, MO 63042, American Postal Workers Union APWU, serving the members that work for the United States Postal Service USPS at the St Louis Network Distribution Center.
I am writing to you with my concerns about the USPS and its future insolvency created by the PAEA (Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act). Currently Postal employees are busy carrying out its mission that dates back to before the creation of the U.S. Constitution, serving and binding the nation together. The Service’s ability to self fund itself has been its greatest success as not one dollar of government tax monies go into Postal income annual revenues. Since the late 1990s the Postal Service has been independent of the US Treasury. Its success has been envied and has led to pronounced cries for change by its critics. As it is, it cannot survive without your intervention to remove the pre-funding PAEA mandate and your vote for financial assistance during this national covid-19 crisis. We have had Christmas level parcel volume since the beginning of the covid-19 outbreak in February 2019 as have all 21 of the USPS Bulk Mail Center (NDC) nationwide.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution authorized the birth of Postal Operations, the Postal Reorganization Act, PRA 1970 created the modern postal service and, continuing through the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act PAEA 2006, faithful service employees have been providing universal service to the American public. Since 2006 the USPS began making the required but unwarranted mandatory payments to Federal Employee Retirement System FERS until they were unable to make these payments. By 2016, the USPS had its fifth straight annual operating loss, in the amount of $5.59 billion of which $5.8 billion was the accrual of unpaid mandatory “future” retiree health payments.
These mandated payments have continued to hamper postal service operations contributing to mounting yearly revenue losses. With declining first class volume and increasing parcel business, there is future hope that the USPS will break even but that recovery is being fiducially hampered by these FERS and needed relief legislation. On July 2nd 2020, Senators Collins (R-ME) and Feinstein (D-CA) introduced the Postal Service Emergency Assistance Act, S.4174 that would allocate $25 billion Covid-19 relief funds to help recover from this national crisis.
PLEASE SUPPORT SENATE BILL S. 4174
In Solidarity
Gregory Fivecoat
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