Political Quotes

“If I might, because I think this is an important letter, I wish to report a significant part of it. I hope people appreciate what the Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service is saying. This is a guy who knows something about the Postal Service. This is a letter to me. Dear Senator Sanders: For several days last week I met with you and your staff to discuss solutions to the current financial crisis within the Postal Service. At the conclusion of those discussions you requested our office focus on one of the solutions that we presented, which examined an option to address the current benefit fund financing. This proposal would eliminate the requirement for the Postal Service to make annual $5.5 billion payments into its retiree health benefit fund, and allow the $44 billion currently in the fund-- Let me talk about that. There is right now, as a result of these funding payments, $44 billion currently in the fund--``to grow with interest.'' What he is saying here, what happens if you have $44 billion and it accrues, as it does, interest between 3 and 4 percent a year. Then he continues. If you did that: No payments would be made from the fund until it is deemed to be fully funded, and the Postal Service would continue to directly pay for the health care premiums for retirees. An additional element of the proposal would allow current overpayments of $13.1 billion in the Postal Service pension funds to be funded to the Postal Service.…”