Necessary Roughness

HT: taynar

The Dallas Star-Telegram, in a column by Dave Lieber “The Watchdog”, reports (link dead) that this latest 2-cent increase on first-class stamps are not to subsidize an unprofitable U.S. Postal Service but instead being used to create a $3 billion escrow account that Congress can spend how it likes.

The Postal Service ended 2005 with a $1.4 billion surplus, according to postalwatch.org, which monitors the USPS.

Last month’s postal increase has nothing to do with rising costs related to mail delivery.

The millions of dollars that will be raised from the price increase - and others recently enacted by the Postal Service - goes into the U.S. Treasury. How will the money be spent? Part goes to paying pensions of government employees. And the rest? Congress hasn’t decided.

“It’s a hidden tax,” said Leo F. Raymond, director of postal affairs for the Mailing & Fulfillment Service Association, a trade group in Alexandria, Va., that represents companies that depend on mass mailings to do business.

Raymond told The Watchdog that he worries that the money could be used to prop up the federal budget. “It wasn’t the Postal Service’s idea,” he said. “It was something they had to do.”

I don’t buy many stamps anyway, but this may a good reason to switch to electronic payments for bills and rethink sending those birthday and Christmas cards.

So if you expect a card from me and don’t get it, it’s not that I don’t love you: I’m protesting taxation without representation.