After 15 years of consecutive losses, the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) latest financial announcement will likely leave taxpayers footing the bill. With the release of this quarter’s fiscal results, the agency announced quarterly losses of $2.5 billion. Comparatively, losses from the same quarter last year were relatively modest at $639 million.
Despite a $107 billion bailout from last year’s Postal Service Reform Act that it attained after providing erroneous profitable forecasts to Congress, and despite the promise of modernization from the Postmaster General, the USPS’ fiscal position is unlikely to turn around. While the USPS’ monopoly services continue to lose billions of dollars, the unit does not disclose its financials for its unregulated services.
USPS is required by law to be self-financing while serving the American public. Unless the USPS fully discloses its financials, the public, taxpayers, and policymakers cannot understand where the public’s dollars are going. With mounting losses, an in-depth investigation of the USPS’ financials is needed. American consumers, taxpayers, Congress, and the United States Postal Regulatory Commission deserve complete transparency.