US Postal Service in danger of collapse

>>> in the big finish tonight, the united states postal service is in danger of collapse. the republican philosophy is privatization. we know that. they are destroying the postal service to get their way. the post office reported a 15 ppt 9 $15.9 billion loss. the post office is losing money because of a 2006 law passed in a lame duck session of the congress by the republicans. the law requires the post office to prefund employee's retirement accounts for the next 75 years. i wonder if mitt romney would say that's a good business plan . these overpayments make up $11 billion of this year's net loss. now the other $5 billion is because of the decline in mailing that's taken place in operations, but it would have been manageable. both problems can be fixed. in april the senate passed a bill allowing the postal service to regain in postal payments. the bill went nowhere. speaker john boehner didn't want anything to do with it. the revenue problem can be solved by modernizing the postal service . bernie sanders says this is what we can do about it. .

>> the postal service has to change. it has to be entrepreneurial. much more pro-consumer. in our state, we have many rural post offices . people want to go there to get letters copied. can't do that. they want to get letters, notarized, against the law. there are many areas the postal service can bring in substantially more revenue.

>> and this is breaking news. no tax dollars go to the operation of the postal service . that's right. zero dollars. these solutions are simple, but republicans are against helping the post office because they want to see it eliminated, bust the union, privatize it. the longer nothing is done, more jobs are lost. the postal service has plans to close 260 post offices around the country. this means that an additional that's at risk if nothing is done. republicans in action on this issue is actually shameless. they have had all year to come to the table to work with the democrats, but they haven't done it. they are hell bent on seeing the u.s. postal service die. even if it means destroying a great american institution in the process, they don't care. they want it privatized. let's turn to greg bell with the postal workers union. good to have you with us tonight. what's the number one thing that can be done right now to save the postal service as we know it?

>> the one thing that must be done is to eliminate the unrealistic mandate that the postal service has to prefund retiree health care benefits for a 75-year period within a ten-year period. that's number one. that's the main cause of the postal service problems. as a matter of fact, that is the cause. if you remove that liability, the postal service would be able to assume the responsibility without any type of additional funds.

>> i want to emphasize here that this is going to financially butcher small business in america, in rural america . what are they going to do? their shipping costs are going to go through the roof. their line item is going to go off the page because they won't be able to cover in service rule america when the post office does right now for many of these companies. mr. bell, it's good to have you with us. it's a story i want to tell over and over again. i want this session of congress to do something about this. it's unfair. mitt romney would never run any of his businesses like that. that's what you republicans need to know . that's "the ed show." i'm ed shultz . "the rachel maddow show"