Editor:

What can one by for only 45 cents? Certainly not a candy bar, an ice cream nor a burger. The correct answer is a United States Postal Service (USPS) stamp that permits one to mail a letter anywhere in the US and have it hand delivered in three days or less. USPS will even do something free - if one puts the wrong address, it comes back at no charge.

Currently congressional hearings have suggested that the postal service is not making a profit, costing taxpayers billions and will go bankrupt. First of all, USPS is a service organization and not a corporation for profit. Secondly, since 1972 the postal service has been on its own selling stamp, etc. without using taxpayers money.

In watching the hearings, the loss is not from operations, but from a 2006 law requiring USPS to pre-pay health care benefits for current and future employees who will retire during the next 75 years by the year 2016. Neither of the two large companies that I worked in accounting (Shell Oil and Northrup Grumman) had to carry such a large burden.

During the hearings, Senator Bernie Sanders suggested that instead of closing post offices, cutting jobs, reducing mail delivery; USPS should expand by selling products/services now banned (cell phones, hunting/fishing licenses, notarizing documents and returning to the Postal Banking System [1910-1966] which offered simple, low-cost, federally insured savings accounts to millions who could not meet minimum standards of regular banks.)

Since the post office was created by congress by the constitution, Article 1, Section 8, “The congress shall have the power to establish post offices...”, I believe that the system should be improved since I consider 45 cents as a real bargain. Actually I have about $100.00 of Christmas Forever stamps at 44 cents each. So if I chose in the 2050, I can write my congressman for 44 cents and tell him “Don’t mess with USPS”.

Justin Szalwinski, Sr.