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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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The reason that they needed to be pre-funded is because the USPS was shrinking and is expected to continue to do so.
What happens with a private company that's shrinking or going under is that people who have a pension plan risk winding up without their pension.
With the USPS, it's a quasi-governmental agency. Strictly-speaking, the government isn't on the hook for the pensions...but it's a pretty good bet that if the USPS can't cover pensions, then USPS workers are going to be asking the government to cover it down the road. This ensures that it's the USPS that pays for it, rather than it running up a huge debt, filing for bankruptcy, and then dumping it on the taxpayer.
The bill required all pensions to be prefunded for 50 years. Even pensions for people who were at retirement age and couldn't possibly last 50 years, and people who have just started and might not stay long enough to qualify for a pension also needed to have a prefunded 50 year pension. That's ridiculous. No other government organization has this requirement, and no other non-government organization has this requirement. So why would the quasi-governmental need one?
Also, USPS was profitable in 2006. While maybe not growing, they weren't going under. This was purely a political move to turn a profitable USPS and make it crash so that private companies like FedEx and UPS could take over the role to make money. Bush Jr used scare tactics to get liberals to vote for this, like the arguments you are using. Thankfully, Biden repealed this law in 2022.