Judicial Watch: Government Agency Buries $8.8 Billion Loss at End of Fiscal Year Report

A troubled government agency notorious for its monstrous financial problems is trying to bury shocking multi-billion-dollar losses at the bottom of a fiscal year report that deceivingly highlights an operating revenue increase.

Issued this month by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), the report prominently features operating revenue increases of hundreds of millions of dollars while incidentally pointing out towards the end a ghastly net loss of $8.8 billion in fiscal year 2019. It constitutes more than double the agency’s loss of $3.9 billion the previous year. The USPS attributes the failure to discount rate changes and workers’ compensation expenses.

Even for a scandal-plagued agency notorious for its egregious spending sprees, the hit to American taxpayers is substantial. Management attributes some of the year’s losses to a $5.4 billion increase in operating expenses driven largely by a spike in workers’ compensation obligations. Compensation and benefits expenses alone increased by $994 million due to contractual wage increases, the USPS reveals, and retirement benefits increased by $320 million “due largely to the higher amortization costs of unfunded benefits.”

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