As we have seen in the past year and a half, our government has taken over several components of the private sector including the banking and housing business and the automobile industry. Washington also has its eyes on potentially controlling America’s health care industry and even the grocery business. However, it seems that the government can’t even efficiently and responsibly handle a service that is Constitutionally instituted: the post office. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution outlines the roles of the legislative branch.One of these such roles is “[t]o establish Post Offices and post Roads”.

Due to a myriad of reasons, the post office is suffering economic losses. It is projected that the post office will lose $238 billion in the next 1o years. The most recent annual data shows a 13% drop in deliveries compared to the previous year due largely to the increased use of e-mail and online services. Additionally, due to reform law and postal worker unions, the post office is required to pay $5 billion a year in prepaid retiree health benefits. All of these financial responsibilities have contributed to the discussion of reducing postal services. The postal service has attempted to compensate for their financial losses by cutting employees and is now contemplating cutting services to five days a week.

Obviously, technological and industrial advances in recent decades have decreased the need for postal services. More and more Americans are using internet technology for services that they formerly used the postal service for, and in fact, the majority of Americans are in favor of cutting postal services to five days a week. However, due to inefficient management and burdensome reform legislation the postal service is in dire straits.

Currently, the federal government is involved in several aspects of America’s health insurance industry. One of these areas in the Medicare system, which is currently wrought with fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. The inefficient management and the errors of Medicare costs the American taxpayers $98 billion in 2009, as taxpayer money was “misdirected” or fraudulently spent. It seems that the component of the health insurance that the government currently controls is already wrecking havoc on the federal budget and the American people. The health care reforms proposed by the White House and Congress include (links lead to PDFs and will take longer to load) health insurance mandates, increased taxes, further government bureaucratization. Does this seem potentially like burdensome reform legislation?

If an entity, such as the post office, that is Constitutionally mandated and has been run by the government for more than 200 years cannot be effectively run by the federal government, why should we believe that entities like the banking, automobile, and health care industries would be effectively run by the government?