Trump eyes privatizing United States Postal Service during second term

[Coventina]

Donald Trump in recent weeks has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the US Postal Service (USPS) because of its financial losses, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.

Trump, who begins his second US presidency on 20 January, has discussed his desire to privatize the USPS with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary, at his Mar-a-Lago home, the report said.

As the Post noted, the move could disrupt consumer shipping and business supply chains while pushing hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of government.

Nonetheless, Trump gathered a group of officials advising him on his transition back to the White House and asked them for their views on privatizing the agency. Informed of its annual financial losses, Trump said the USPS should not be subsidized by the government, according to the people who spoke with the Post on the condition of anonymity so that they could speak frankly about private conversations.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/14/trump-united-states-postal-service-privatization

*************************************************************************************************

[BoRaGard]

1. Another G.O.P. plan to empower Korporate Rule, Inc. (R)

[exboyfil]

2. Rural voters are just going to love this

Their deliveries are heavily subsidized (same cost to male a letter to Calvin, ND as NYC for example).

[Nanjeanne]

3. Shocked!

[Kingofalldems]

4. Over 50% minority employees.

Watch Fox and RW news start demonizing postal workers.

[bluesbassman]

6. Lots of Vets too.

And yet that demographic still was a huge supporter. I’ll never understand how my brother and sister vets could vote for that POS.

[Kingofalldems]

14. Yes quite a few military retirees.

[underpants]

5. Good luck with that.

[WarGamer]

7. Think about it...

A person will come to your home in San Diego... pick up a Birthday card and hand deliver it to your cousin in New Hampshire... for 73 cents.

That's pretty silly and someone is eating the cost of doing business.

Just price a First Class stamp at the cost of the service.

[Wonder Why]

8. Won't it be wonderful that DeJoy would then be able to fire all the workers and give himself a $40M bonus?

He can outsource all the work to China. Ship all the mail over there to be sorted (and opened) then ship it back to deliver locally by Chinese drones gathering intelligence data on the way.

First Class mail would only take a month so you'll have to use Priority Mail to get it within a week.

[UpInArms]

9. Does no one remember what GWB did in 2006?

Last edited Mon Dec 16, 2024, 04:44 PM - Edit history (1)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Accountability_and_Enhancement_Act

Between 2007 and 2016, the USPS lost $62.4 billion; the inspector general of the USPS estimated that $54.8 billion of that (87%) was due to prefunding retiree benefits.[13] By the end of 2019, the USPS had $160.9 billion in debt, due to growth of the Internet, the Great Recession, and prepaying for employee benefits as stipulated in PAEA.[14] Mail volume decreased from 97 billion to 68 billion items from 2006 to 2012. The employee benefits cost the USPS about $5.5 billion per year;[15] USPS began defaulting on this payment in 2012.[13] The COVID-19 pandemic further reduced income due to decreased demand in 2020.[14]

Columnist Dan Casey wrote in a July 2014 op-ed in The Roanoke Times that the PAEA is "one of the most insane laws Congress ever enacted".[8] Bill Pascrell, a Democratic House member from New Jersey, said in 2019 that it was rushed through Congress without due consideration, and referred to it as "one of the worst pieces of legislation Congress has passed in a generation".[10] In May 2020, a segment on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver examined the law and its impact on the USPS, demonstrating that it has contributed to its debt.[16] It has been alleged that this legislation contributed to the 2020 United States Postal Service crisis.[9]

The USPS Fairness Act, introduced in 2021 with bipartisan support by Peter DeFazio in the U.S. House and by Steve Daines and Brian Schatz in the U.S. Senate, would undo substantial parts of the PAEA.[17] It eventually passed the Senate as part of the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022.[18]

[raging moderate]

10. Wouldn't this violate the United States Constitution? It must not happen!

The United States Postal Service is mandated in the United States Constitution.

[Noel Kums]

11. So that's what Old Post Office building renewed interest is all about. Grift by association.

[IzzaNuDay]

12. Constitutional upending?

The US Constitution provides for Postal service with congressional advice.

What worries me is if the dotard wants to privatize USPS, he would need congressional approval. Given the GOP domination in both Senate and house, does that mean he could bully them into acquiescence of his goals? And now SCOTUS has his sycophants, the dotard has an easier path to privatization?

I’m going to research all of this to get my analysis straight and write to my representatives. I’m concerned this dotard will
do anything to make his ideas (or concepts of a plan) reality.

[ultralite001]

13. Ben Franklin would doubtless have some thoughts on this...

Benjamin Franklin + the US Post Office
https://www.history.com/news/us-post-office-benjamin-franklin

Neither snow nor rain : a history of the United States Postal Service
by Leonard, Devin
https://archive.org/details/neithersnownorra0000leon

How the Post Office Created America: A History
By Winifred Gallagher
https://archive.org/details/howpostofficecreia40gall

Benjamin Franklin as the social network genius of his time? Yes, says one Stanford scholar
Caroline Winterer
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2018/11/benjamin-franklin-social-genius-18th-century

[LetMyPeopleVote]

15. In Trump's second term, will USPS privatization be on the table?

New reporting suggests the president-elect has expressed "a keen interest" in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service once he returns to the White House.
https://bsky.app/profile/mynewsfeed.link/post/3ldgnu6kxzw2g

In Trump’s second term, will USPS privatization be on the table?: New reporting suggests the president-elect has expressed "a keen interest" in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service once he returns to the White House

Link to tweet

UPDATE (December 16, 2024, 12:31 p.m. ET): Shortly after this report was published, Donald Trump publicly confirmed that he is, in fact, considering privatizing the U.S. Postal Service.

The United States Constitution doesn’t go into a lot of detail about specific benefits the federal government is supposed to provide to the citizenry — the document tends to rely on generalities such as promoting “the general welfare” — but Article I, Section 8 explicitly authorizes officials to “establish post offices.”

In other words, as long as there’s been a United States government, a domestic mail system has been a pillar of the American experience. There is, however, fresh reason to be concerned about that system’s future. The Washington Post reported:

President-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.[/blockquote]

According to the Post’s reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, the Republican has broached the subject of a Postal Service “overhaul” with several members of his team, including Howard Lutnick, his choice for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition......

Asked about his apparent USPS disdain during a White House press briefing, Trump offered a long, meandering, hard-to-follow diatribe, in which he seemed to argue that USPS finances would be fine if it simply imposed higher rates on Amazon.com (a company Trump disliked because its owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Washington Post, which he also disliked).

His complaints were quickly discredited, though his scorn for the Postal Service apparently lingers.

In theory, it’s easy to imagine members of Congress having a problem with privatization plans, but in practice, let’s not forget that many congressional Republicans are on record supporting privatizing the USPS out of existence. In other words, if Trump is serious about such a plan, he might not face too much resistance on Capitol Hill, at least among GOP officials.

[Darwins_Retriever]

16. How about digitizing the entire postal system

Each home equipped with a USPS tablet to receive and reply to mail. Each post office becomes a data center. All bills and payments done online. Mail received within minutes instead of days. A straight monthly charge, maybe based on delivery time.