If you ran a booming for-profit business where you collected $7 for every $1 spent, would you cut staff and pile on the work? If you had specialists who, every day, brought in the equivalent of 20 times their salary, would you tell them to knock it off? Or knock them off the payroll?

If you ran a business and were dedicated to delivering what others can’t and won’t — at bargain basement prices — would you rethink your mission? Forget about the public service c#@p and go for the big bucks?

If any of the above intrigues you and you seek job satisfaction and security, apply to the Internal Revenue Service or the U.S. Postal Service. You might want to hurry where there are still jobs. (Just to be on the safe side, keep buying lottery tickets too!)

Some politicians and some portions of the business community would like to see both the IRS and the USPS disappear. Or better yet, hang around, for kicks and giggles, so long as workers and managers would agree to wear straightjackets while doing their thing.

Congress in recent years has cut funding for the IRS even though it brings in 93 cents of every dollar Uncle Sam gets to operate. If it weren’t for loans from generous foreign bankers — like the Chinese — we’d be in real trouble. Fortunately, they have only our best interests at heart, so what’s wrong with mortgaging the Lincoln Memorial?

Some politicians just don’t like the IRS. Others think it has been used by the Obama administration to crack down on the state-exempt status of conservative political groups. Some are representing constituents who think the tax laws (written by Congress) are screwed up. Which of course they are. Or, they (and their constituents) just don’t like to pay taxes. Many of us can drink to that! But then reality rears its ugly (practical) head. As long as we are going to fight wars a long way from home (better than closer to home) and take care of our citizens, taxes will probably be with us.

The long-running assault on the USPS is different. Big business, for years, has been after the more lucrative parts of the service. Not the stupid delivering letters for peanuts part. Rather it wants — and has largely gotten — the lucrative package trade. That has gone well, and is done well. They do deliver — for a fee! But ask one of those next-day delivery companies to get a letter — from Brooklyn to your Aunt Minnie, Box 19, Nome, Alaska 99762 — for 49 cents (price of a first class stamp) and see what response, other than peals of laughter, you get.

While the USPS has been the butt of jokes for decades, it would easily turn a profit (like the $1.4 billion last year) except for Congress. Thanks to Congress it is the only federal agency that is required to pre-fund its projected pension costs. No other federal agency or operation, including the House and Senate, do that.

So where are we going with this? Last Thursday’s column talked about the financial plight of the IRS and the USPS. Our e-mail response went off the chart. We heard from lots of been-there-done-that feds. Some defended, some attacked, the two agencies. We’d like to hear more, and maybe pass it on. Maybe we all — starting with the White House and Congressional leadership — need to hear from somebody other than political partisan or paid lobbyists. Sound off to: mikecausey@federalnewsradio.com.

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID:

Compiled by Michael O’Connell

The 2013 population estimate for Nome, Alaska, is 9,892.

Source: U.S. Census

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