US Postal Service

I used to say irrelevantly that the Postal Service was the only Federal Government program that could effectively deliver services. I guess that isn’t true anymore:

Faced with dwindling mail volume and rising costs, the post office was $2.8 billion in the red last year and, “if current trends continue, we could experience a net loss of $6 billion or more this fiscal year,” [Postmaster] Potter said in testimony for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee.

They are discussing dropping one delivery day a week as a cost savings measure. Sounds like a decent solution, until they get to their Government math:

A study done by George Mason University last year for the independent Postal Regulatory Commission estimated that going from six-day to five-day delivery would save the post office more than $1.9 billion annually, while a Postal Service study estimated the saving at $3.5 billion.

But here is the real golden nugget where a bureaucrat, the Postmaster General acknowledges that increasing rates leads to decreasing revenue.

The next postal rate increase is scheduled for May, with the amount to be announced next month. Under current rules that would be limited to the amount of the increase in last year’s consumer price index, 3.8 percent. That would round to a 2-cent increase in the current 42-cent first class rate.
The agency could request a larger increase because of the special circumstances, but Potter believes that would be counterproductive by causing mail volume to fall even more.

Got that Democrats. Raise the tax rates and you will get less revenue