No other federal agency or private enterprise is forced to pre-fund similar benefits like this, especially on such an aggressive schedule.

This postal-only mandate costs the USPS $5.5 billion per year. It accounts for 100 percent of the Postal Service’s $20 billion in losses over the past four years.

It also accounts for 100 percent of the rise in the Postal Service’s debt in recent years.

Without the mandate, the USPS would have been profitable over the past four years, and rather than having to use up its $15 billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury to cover the pre-funding obligation, the Postal Service would have had significant borrowing authority to ride out the bad economy it now faces.