The U.S. Postal Service is suffering financially and expects to run out of money in the fall. Email has, over the years, drained away a large percentage of USPS revenue. Onerous accounting practices forced on the service by a previous Congress intent on privatizing mail delivery have only added to the financial stress.
And now the novel coronavirus pandemic has brought the Postal Service to the brink of insolvency. Democrats in Congress have attempted to include monies to prop up the service in recent financial aid packages, but Republicans and President Trump have killed these proposals.
The president says the USPS loses money on every package it delivers for e-commerce merchants, and that he will not approve any monies for the USPS unless rates on merchants like Amazon are increased.
But his contention that the service loses money shipping packages for Amazon appears to be an analysis derived from his gut — or his dislike of Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post — rather than any analysis of the numbers. The USPS says revenue from package deliveries far exceeds costs and is actually a financial bright spot.
The USPS has its origins in the Constitution and has been serving America since the founding of our great nation. It allows people in the remotest areas of the country to connect with anyone in the world.
For 55 cents, it will transport a letter, a birthday card, or a wedding invitation from New York to San Francisco or anywhere in between. If we lose the Postal Service do you think FedEx or UPS will do the same?
I contacted the offices of our congressman, Lee Zeldin, to ask if he is willing to break with President Trump and support the Postal Service. As of this writing, I have not heard back from the congressman or his staff. I am not surprised, as I have also not heard Mr. Zeldin advise his constituents to ignore President Trump’s touting household cleaners as a possible cure for the virus. We can’t make our president angry, can we?
I urge all Press readers (even you Trump supporters) to call our congressman and ask him to lend his support to any congressional attempt to save our Postal Service.
John Neely
Westhampton Beach
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