by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
In what was meant to be an "Oddly Enough" article on USPS's proposed "forever stamps", Washington Post reporter Christopher Lee unwittingly gives away the game [emphasis mine]:
The Postal Service, which has a $69 billion annual budget, expects to finish this fiscal year about $2 billion in the red. It faces rising fuel, health-care and other expenses as well as a requirement to put about $3 billion a year into a congressionally mandated escrow fund...
The Escrow Fund, originally created in 1988, was intented to shore up the Service's creaking pension & health care obligations to future retirees. Today, the Postal Service's pension plans are on sure footing and the agency's debt is now zero. Without the mandatory escrow contribution, the Service would be running a $1 billion surplus. But because the USPS operations are 'off-budget', Congress forces them to overpay into the Escrow fund to reduce the 'on-budget' deficit most commonly reported in the headlines. According to a December USPS press release, the escrow contributions are the root cause behind the most recent increase in first-class stamp prices.
So there you have it. The Modern Republican Party, in the name of a slightly less-worse news story about the deficit, has re-instated the Stamp Tax, perhaps the signature issue that caused our colonial forefathers to the cast off the yoke of British rule.
