The financially-strapped Postal Service claims it overpaid into a federal retirement program and is owed a $75 billion refund, which it says would help solidify its financial position.
However, a report released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office says a refund would not solve any of the Postal Service’s long-term financial problems.
In fact, GAO said, it could not find any evidence the Postal Service overpaid into the program at all.
A refund would not “be sufficient to repay all of USPS’s debt and address current and future operating deficits related to USPS’s inability to cut costs quickly enough to match declining mail volume and revenue,†GAO said.
The Postal Service’s inspector general and the Postal Regulatory Commission both said in 2010 the agency had paid too much into the federal government’s retirement fund for employees. Since 1974, the Postal Service has been required to split payments into the retirement fund.
