The USPS is off-budget, so it receives no tax money other than what the government pays for postage. In 2006 things looked rosy for the Postal service, and Congress decided, in a lame duck session, that rather than allow the USPS to use the money to fund continuing operations, that the USPS should use the money to pre-fund retirement benefits for employees who haven't even been born yet.

If you have a mortgage, and the bank decides to change a 30 year note to a 10 year note by fiat, it might cause you a few financial difficulties, and that's exactly what happened.

Then came the recession, which cut down on the amount of mail being sent.

Minus the PAEA legislation, the Postal service has actually turned a $1 billion profit over the last 5 years.

The money the USPS is losing is entirely due to badly flawed legislation, and it's time to fix it.