Post Office finances

Your story on Cape Girardeau's mail-processing center keeping some operations through 2015 was generally thorough but vague on postal finances -- the very factor the Postal Service cites in pushing to reduce services to the public.

That push goes beyond slowing the mail; it also includes ending Saturday and door-to-door deliveries. Degrading these services would prevent small businesses in Cape and elsewhere from receiving checks and orders on weekends, and force residents to traipse daily around neighborhoods in Missouri weather seeking cluster boxes.

But all this is based on the false premise that the Postal Service loses money delivering the mail. In fact, with letter revenue stabilizing as the economy improves, and package revenue skyrocketing as people shop online, operating profits are growing.

The Postal Service's Fiscal Year 2014's $1.4 billion operating profit's already been surpassed halfway through fiscal 2015.

Postal red ink stems not from the mail, but from Washington politics. In 2006, a lame-duck Congress mandated that the Postal Service prefund retiree health benefits. No other agency or company has to prefund for even one year; the Postal Service must prefund 75 years into the future and pay for it all over a decade. That $5.6 billion annual charge is the red ink.

Instead of targeting services relied on by residents and business owners, Washington officials should fix the real problem. Then the Postal Service -- based in the Constitution and the largest employer of military veterans -- can continue to offer Americans the world's most-affordable delivery network.

Fredric Rolando, president National

Association of Letter Carriers, Washington, D.C.