Description: This is
a VOA Special English Economics Report.
See text below
Text:
The United States Postal Service has a history as
long as the nation's. The Second Continental
Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin as the first
postmaster general in seventeen seventy-five. In
September, the current postmaster general, Patrick
Donahoe, brought an urgent message to a Senate
committee. He told the Committee on Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs that the Post
Office could need more money by the end of the
month. "Without the enactment of comprehensive
legislation by September thirtieth, the Postal
Service will default on a mandated $5.5 billion
payment to the Treasury to pre-fund retirement
retiree health benefits. Our situation is urgent."
The Postal Service had losses of almost six billion
dollars for the nine-month period ending in June.
That could grow to ten billion for the year. Part of
the deficit is a five and a half billion dollar
payment to the federal retirement plan for postal
workers.Mr. Donahoe is asking Congress to approve
huge changes to the Postal Service. He wants to cut
over one hundred thousand workers, close thousands
of post offices and end Saturday mail delivery. He
says the service needs to operate more like a
business. The Postal Service is responsible for its
own financing and not part of the federal budget.
But it does take part in federal retirement and
health plans. It says it has paid too much to
federal retirement plans and wants at least seven
billion dollars returned. Mr. Donahoe also wants to
pull the Postal Service out of the federal benefit
plans. He says the service's proposals could cut
twenty billion dollars by twenty-fifteen and return
it to profitability. John Berry is director of the
federal Office of Personnel Management which
supervises federal retirement and health plans. He
said the Obama administration would soon announce
its own plan. At the hearing, Senator Susan Collins
criticized the administration for not having a plan
already. Leaders of two labor unions representing
postal workers have also criticized the proposed
cuts. The United States Postal Service has over five
hundred sixty thousand employees. It reported
revenue of sixty-seven billion dollars last year --
more than either of its biggest private competitors,
FedEx or UPS. But as the amount of physical mail
decreases, so too have the earnings from Postal
Service operations.For VOA Special English, I'm Alex
Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
