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Issa to blame for postal woes

To the editor:

It appears that the House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., cannot keep his nose out of the Postal Service business.

Issa is the main player in this tragedy. He is trying to cut 100,000 jobs from the United States Postal Service and cripple postal workers right to collective bargaining. Issa is introducing the Postal Reform Act of 2013 in the House Of Representatives.

This act would cripple the Postal Service. It will eliminate Saturday deliveries and door-to-door service for millions of Americans. But, here’s the real up yours to the American public by Issa. The Postal Service doesn’t need to cut jobs or eliminate services. What it needs is to end the disastrous pre-funding mandate, which requires the Postal Service to guarantee retiree health care and pension benefits for 75 years.

The Republican Congress is demanding that the Postal Service provide something they are strongly against, universal health care. Congress, in 2006, passed into law the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act, which mandated the Postal Service would have to fully fund retiree benefits for future retirees. The act meant that every Sept. 30, the USPS had to pay $5.5 billion to the Treasury for the refunding of future retirees health plans. The Postal Service is funding the retirement packages of people who haven’t been born yet. This is a Bush-era mandate that no other government or private company is forced to do.

The Postal Service is older than the Constitution itself. It is not paid for by taxpayers dollars, but rather fully funded by the sale of stamps. What we have is a service that caters primarily to the economically disadvantaged and employs more than 575,000 union members. A few years ago the USPS was considered not only stable, but thriving. Crippling one of the last great public services would be quite a feat for Issa.

Frank Papini

Bridgeport

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