I’ve always defended the Post Office when people disparage it.  Maybe the lines are long, and, yes, once in a while a postal worker goes, well, you know, but the fact that it can move hundreds of millions of pieces of paper from point A to point B, across millions of square miles in just a couple of days, is a wonder of organizational management. They do it right.

Something else the U.S. Postal Service has done right — something no other U.S. government agency has — is pre-funding its pension plan. That is, it puts money away today to pay for the pensions of its employees tomorrow.  It pays as it goes.

But now, the U.S. Postal Service is asking Congress to relieve it of that financial “burden.” In other words, it wants to join the rest of the federal government in promising retirement benefits with money it doesn’t have.

How will pensions be funded then?  The same way the rest of them are.  They aren’t.  Our children will be stuck worrying about them. They will have to pay the bill, along with all the others being heaped onto them.

Is anyone else seeing an alarming pattern here?

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays our future generations from their appointed debts.