No surprise here that two Trump administrations were enough to bleed an American institution dry.
If it continues business as usual, the U.S. Postal Service is on track to run out of cash for paying its workers and vendors in about a year and may have to stop deliveries, Postmaster General David Steiner told lawmakers this week.
This is the latest development in longstanding money troubles at USPS — a unique federal government agency that relies on stamps and service fees, not tax dollars, to deliver mail and packages six days a week to every address in the country. And let’s not forget the absurd fund they’re required to have on hand for retirements.
“I am not sure that the American public is aware that the Postal Service is at a critical juncture. I know that I wasn’t aware of the extent of it before I took on this role, but at our current run rate and if we continue to pay our required obligations in the same manner as we have done in recent years, then we will be out of cash in less than 12 months,” Steiner, who joined USPS last July, said in a written statement released ahead of a House Oversight subcommittee hearing on Tuesday.
Don’t kid yourself. Steiner, who is on the board of FedEx, was brought on to rationalize plans to privatize the postal service. One thing he did was force Amazon into a bidding process for last-mile delivery service.
Under new Postmaster General David Steiner, the Postal Service solicited bids from Amazon and other businesses for the service for the first time. Steiner has said the bidding will help the quasigovernmental agency determine the true market value of the last-mile service.
Amazon’s existing contract with the Postal Service expires in October. Results of the last-mile bidding competition will be released in the second quarter, and contracts will be finalized by the end of the third quarter. That left Amazon concerned that it would have little time to make changes to its network if its bid weren’t accepted, the people said.
Sounds like he held a gun to their head. Gee, you don’t suppose FedEx wins the bidding?
