The feds love to bail out those in financial trouble

While millions of individual taxpayers struggle to pay back their student loans, one of the biggest money losing government agencies in the history of history is spending millions—with a larger plan to spend billions over the next few years—just over a year removed from a massive $107 billion federal bailout.

When the president signed the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 in April of last year, it wiped out $57 billion of the agency’s debt with the swipe of a pen and will save the USPS another $50 billion over the next decade.

Consider this: You have federal college loan debt and before 2020, when the feds froze payments, you were most likely shelling out $500 or more a month for years to try and pay back that debt despite interest rates in the 8’s, 9’s, and double digits on your $25 an hour job.

Meanwhile, according to the US Government Accountability Office, the Postal Service lost $87 billion between 2006 and 2020 and between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2021, the agency took an adjusted loss of approximately $1.3 billion.

Some of the same congressmen and women that voted for the USPS bailout are the same ones who support the lawsuits that sent Biden’s forgiveness plan to the Supreme Court.

Honestly, you and I have no one to blame for this but ourselves. We are the rubes who go to the polls every other November and vote religiously for these charlatans and then applaud them when they take money out of our pockets and food off our tables.

Of course the USPS bailout isn’t the first example of bloated government agencies or banks or corporations getting bailed out while you pay your bills every month and drive back and forth to work in your 15-year-old rusted out Toyota so you can pay upwards of $3.50 a gallon for gas and $2000 or $3,000 a year in care insurance to do it.

In 1980, Chrysler was awarded a contract to build the M1 Abrams tank, which the U.S. military used in the Cold War. The contract, and the hope that it would save hundreds of thousands of jobs, led the government to issue a $1.5 billion bailout.

In 1989, we had the saving and loan crisis. According to Politico, the situation resulted from almost a third of the savings and loan associations in the U.S. failing over several years, thanks in part to their participation in several risky real estate ventures.

The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 was passed by Congress to institute several helpful reforms. In the act, federal regulators first attempted to address the issue by deregulating the industry, hoping that the market would help correct the course of the institutions. When that failed, the feds turned to taxpayers. The price tag was an estimated $124 billion.

In 2001, the feds stepped in and shelled out $15 billion to the airline industry, which had seen traffic fall by 30% after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 of that year.

While most of that money went to major airlines, approximately a third went to other sources—including package delivery companies, bankrupt airlines, and helicopter companies.

In Dec. 2008, then President George W. Bush announced a $17.4 billion bailout to General Motors and Chrysler (again).

Without federal aid, GM and Chrysler warned, “they faced bankruptcy and the loss of 1 million jobs.”

Barack Obama, the president-elect, supported Bush’s move, saying it was a “necessary step to avoid a collapse in our auto industry that would have devastating consequences for our economy and our workers.”

Once in office Obama created an auto task force that extended tens of billions more in emergency financing to Detroit.

On top of all that, the U.S. Treasury lent money to and bought stock in GM and Chrysler and provided incentives to spur new car purchases.

In all, the federal government extended nearly $81 billion to bail out the auto industry in a rescue effort that began under Bush’s watch and ended in December 2014, well into Obama’s second term.

The effort cost taxpayers $10.2 billion.

I don’t have enough column inches to cover all the federal handouts that have rolled down from the hill since 2020 but we do need to touch on the USPS one last time.

According to a news report from PBS.com, the agency aims to have all newly purchased vehicles be electric powered by 2026 thanks in part to $3 billion the USPS pocketed from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act passed last year.

I hope you all saved those $1,200 COVID checks. You’re gonna need them to start paying on your loans come July.

At least you know the checks will get to their destination via fancy new electric vehicles.