USPS increasingly profitable

There's a lot of misleading "conventional wisdom" about U.S. Postal Service finances. Unfortunately, some of it was included in your otherwise excellent story about the proposed ending of mail processing at the USPS facility in Cape Girardeau.

The story attributed Postal Service financial challenges to an infrastructure "deemed too large" (without attribution) and declining letter volume.

What belies this is something your readers weren't told -- Postal Service operations are profitable, and increasingly so.

In Fiscal Year 2014, the Postal Service -- which earns its revenue from selling stamps, not from taxpayer money -- had a $1.4 billion operating profit. That takes into account letter revenue, the cost of delivering the mail, the number of processing facilities, employees, the infrastructure and every other aspect of the business.

Already, 2015's black ink has surpassed $1.4 billion. Meanwhile, cash on hand stands at $7 billion, the highest in years.

Why? As the economy improves from the Great Recession, letter revenue is again rising. Meanwhile, as folks in Cape Girardeau and elsewhere shop online, package revenue is skyrocketing.

So Postal Service red ink can't be blamed on postal operations and networks -- since those operations and networks are producing impressive, and rising, profits.

In fact, the problem isn't the mail but rather congressional politics. In 2006, a lame-duck Congress mandated that the Postal Service prefund future retiree health benefits. No other agency or company has to prefund for even one year; the Postal Service must prefund 75 years into the future and pay for it all in a 10-year period. That $5.6 billion annual charge is the red ink.

Several Missouri lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, recognize that it's nonsensical to degrade postal networks -- whether slowing the mail or ending Saturday and door-to-door delivery -- when the networks have returned to profitability. Not only doesn't it address the problem, reducing services would hurt southeast Missourians, small businesses and the Postal Service itself.

Eliminating Saturday delivery would take a heavy toll on Missouri's residents and on its small businesses, which are open weekends and employ 1,109,463 people -- and would see their costs rise if compelled to contract with private carriers to receive checks on Saturday. Ending door delivery would force people to traipse around neighborhoods in Missouri weather seeking "cluster boxes." And slowing the mail by closing 82 processing plants around the country, as the Postal Service plans, is counterproductive.

Such actions would send the Postal Service into a downward spiral by driving mail -- and revenue -- away. And they'd cost jobs. The national mailing industry, which depends on a robust, six-days-a-week Postal Service, employs 7.5 million Americans in the private sector -- including 165,343 Missourians.

Show-Me State residents should press their representatives to take a common-sense approach -- preserve and strengthen the postal networks, while addressing the pre-funding fiasco. Then the Postal Service can continue to provide Americans and their businesses with the world's most affordable delivery network.

Fredric Rolando is the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers.