Earlier today, President Barack Obama released his fiscal year 2013 budget proposal. The voluminous document, which is prepared by the White House Office of Management and Budget, lays out a framework for the Administration’s legislative and fiscal priorities. However, more times than not, on Capitol Hill, it is “dead on arrival.”

This year’s White House contribution to the budget discussion offers a number of proposals that, if enacted, would effect the U.S. Postal Service and its employees. The President’s budget plan would:

• Implement five-day mail delivery, beginning on January 1, 2013

• Refund the estimated $11 billion surplus USPS retirement contributions in two payments, one half in FY 2012 and the other half in FY 2013

• Adjust the retiree health liability to reflect the USPS’ shrinking workforce

• Permit the USPS to increase postage by 1.8% to reach the 5.6% increase that it requested in 2010

• Roll $14 billion of this year’s and the next two years’ scheduled FEHBP pre-funding payments into the accumulated FY 2017 retiree health liability, and amortize the total over 40 years

• Increase postal and federal employee FERS and CSRS contributions by 1.2%, over the next three years

The White House projects that its USPS proposals would provide the USPS with $25 billion in “cash relief over the next two years and produce savings of $25 billion over 11 years.” In addition, the increase in FERS and CSRS retirement contributions would save the federal budget $27 billion over the next decade.

It is important to note that the FY 2013 budget process is just commencing and that NAPUS will be fighting against those proposals, whether originating in Congress or in the White House, that adversely impacts NAPUS members.

via NAPUS