Can You Be A Wall Street Baron And Still Be A Democrat? Let's Ask Peter Orszag

Whenever I send out a package through the post office I always write "Fragile" on it. And these days I also write "I hate Darrell Issa Too," knowing postal workers will take extra special care of my valuables. Turns out, though Darrell Issa isn't the only culprit in the USPS mess-- and neither are all the villains Republicans.

There's a lot of money to be made in privatizing the post office-- not for us, of course, but Wall Street drools at the prospect. And, of course, Republicans and their Blue Dog allies are doing everything in their power to undermine and sabotage the post office for exactly that reason. Many of us were sickened this week when former Obama OMB Director, Peter Orszag, currently cashing in as vice chairman of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup, the company that probably has the most to gain by running the financial aspects of a post office privatization, called for privatization. It's doubly ironic since the OMB worked with the GOP to cripple the Post Office to begin with, setting up the perfect scenario for exactly what Orszag is trying to do now!

Here’s the back-story. In 1970, after almost two centuries, the Post Office was transformed from a Cabinet agency to the quasi-independent US Postal Service (USPS). In keeping with its new status, Congress eventually moved its finances off budget. Yet, as I’ve discussed before, the OMB and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) ignored Congress and continued to include the USPS in the unified budget, the budget they use for “scoring” legislation to estimate its impact on the deficit.

Fast forward to 2001. The Government Accountability Office put the Postal Service on its list of “high-risk” programs because of rising financial pressures resulting from exploding demand from both the residential and commercial sectors. Then in 2002 the anxiety level fell dramatically when the Office of Personnel Management found the Postal Service had been significantly overpaying into its retirement fund.

It seemed a simple matter to reduce future payments and tap into the existing surplus to pay for current expenses. And would have been if the OMB and the CBO did not insist on adhering to their make-belief accounting system.

Several times between 2002 and 2005 Congress did overwhelmingly approved tapping into the existing surplus. Each time the White House nixed the idea because it would increase the deficit.

Finally, in 2006 the Post Office and Congress agreed to literally buy off the CBO and OMB. Budget neutrality over a ten-year period was achieved by requiring the USPS to make ten annual payments of $5.4-5.8 billion. The level of the annual payments was not based on any actuarial determination. They were produced by the CBO to equal the amounts necessary to offset the loss of the escrow payments. Under the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 the USPS was forced to prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in ten years, something no other government agency or private corporation is required to do.

The Postal Regulatory Commission noted that those payments “transformed what would have been considerable profits into significant losses.” Indeed, 90 percent or more of the current deficit is a result of these artificially created debts.

The Post Office is indeed in a financial crisis, but not one of its own making.

Enter Peter Orszag who still subscribes to the make believe world created by his old agency. His article lists three problems the USPS faces. The artificial debt is not among them. He lists three counterarguments people might use to oppose privatization. The artificial debt is not among them.

A real world solution to the USPS fiscal crisis would be to remove the artificially generated financial noose from its neck and then build on its two most important assets: its ubiquitous physical infrastructure and the high esteem in which Americans hold it. In combination, these assets offer the post office an enviable platform upon which to generate many new revenue-producing services.

But for Peter Orszag the solution is to ignore the fraudulent financial burden imposed on the USPS and sell off and dismantle its ubiquitous infrastructure. “In addition to its 32,000 post offices, it has 461 processing facilities, monopoly access to residential mailboxes and an overfunded pension plan,” he writes. “These assets would attract bidders. Consider, for example, that many processing facilities and post offices sit on valuable real estate, and it may be smarter to sell many of them than to keep them.”

Did I forget to mention that Peter Orszag is currently vice chairman of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup? Citigroup certainly be in the running to oversee the privatization of the post office, a process that would generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and undoubtedly handsomely benefit Mr. Orszag personally. Now that’s chutzpah.