“It must be the day for right wing attacks on postal workers. Hot on the heels of ace market forecaster Kevin Hassett’s latest predictions comes a rant from that favorite tea bagger think tank, the Cato Institute. Tad Dehaven, who bills himself as a budget analyst, analyzes the USPS by pointing to the fact that “The USPS, which is close to maxing out its $15 billion line of credit with the U.S. Treasury, faces the prospect of running out of operating cash by year’s end.” No mention of the fact that the entire $15 billion in borrowing is due to the “trust fund” requirements of the 2006 PAEA law, which forces the USPS to borrow money from the Treasury so it can turn around and loan the money back to the Treasury.
Similarly, Dehaven trots out the familiar “labor still accounts for 80 percent of the USPS’s costs” without mentioning that 90% of the last fiscal year’s $6 billion loss was due to the $5.5 billion “trust fund” requirement.
Then Dehaven gets to the big one- he tells us “An arbitrator weighing a decision on a contract dispute between postal management and a union is not allowed to consider the financial position of the USPS when rendering a decision.” It would be nice if Dehaven could tell us where this restriction appears in the law, but of course he can’t, because there is no such restriction. More importantly, Dehaven seems to be blissfully unaware of the fact that for the last ten years, postal wages and benefits have been set voluntarily by collective bargaining, not by arbitrators. More importantly, since the USPS was established in 1971, wage increases granted by arbitrators have averaged significantly lower than increases agreed to by the USPS at the bargaining table.
None of those actual facts fit the narrative, though, so Dehaven leaves them out. “
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