According to a new report published by Common Cause, a nonprofit government watchdog group, Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, is one of the top 100 recipients of campaign funds from the natural gas industry.

As the study reports, natural gas interests have spent “more than $747 million during a 10-year campaign … to avoid government regulation of hydraulic ‘fracking,’ a fast-growing and environmentally risky process” that aims to tap underground gas reserves.

The toxic chemicals commonly used during fracking procedures can enter an area’s underground drinking water supply or later be dumped as wastewater into waterways around the country.

“A faction of the natural gas industry has directed more than $20 million to the campaigns of current members of Congress,” reads the report, “and put $726 million into lobbying aimed at shielding itself from oversight. ”

Mica, number 89 on the list of top contributors, received a total of $67,600 from natural gas interests. The vast majority of that ($57,500) came from PACs, while $10,100 came from individuals working for the industry.

According to the report, many of the natural gas industry’s political donations favor lawmakers, like Mica, who supported the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted fracking from regulations under the Safe Drinking Act. A resolution that aims to repeal that exemption (and thus require the contents of fracking fluids to be publicly disclosed) was recently introduced in the House, by Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Co. The resolution has 63 co-sponsors, Mica not among them.

“Players in this industry have pumped cash into Congress in the same way they pump toxic chemicals into underground rock formations to free trapped gas,” said Common Cause President Bob Edgar in a press release. “And as fracking for gas releases toxic chemicals into groundwater and streams, the industry’s political fracking for support is toxic to efforts for a cleaner environment and relief from our dependence on fossil fuels.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is slated to publish new findings on the potential dangers of fracking in 2012. The forthcoming report, which could shape public opinion about the practice, is likely an incentive for the industry to pump more money into campaigns before the New Year.

Mica, R-Winter Park, played a critical role in the recent FAA shutdown when he failed to support a provision in the FAA reauthorization bill to make it easier for airport employees to unionize. As the head of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Mica got the lion’s share of the blame for the shutdown, and was lambasted when he said he had used his vote as a “bargaining tool” to gain the support of Senate Democrats.

Eventually, Mica said he was willing to compromise on the bill, and a recent press release sent out by his team shows that he is fully supportive of an FAA grant given to his district. In late September, the administration awarded the Orlando Sanford International Airport, which lies in Mica’s district, a $10.6 million grant to assist in the purchase of land needed to expand a runway.

“Orlando Sanford International Airport is a significant contributor to the local economy of Seminole County,” said Mica in his release. “By acquiring the land to improve and expand the runway at the airport, we can bring in newer quieter passenger aircraft and improve safety. This will further allow us to expand business and economic activity at the airport, creating more jobs for the region.”

Larry Dale, president and CEO of the airport, said he appreciates Mica’s assistance in securing the grant, adding that the congressman has “repeatedly been a good friend to the growth of this airport and to all the transportation needs of Central Florida.”

In recent months, Mica has proposed slashing transportation funds in a move he said would save money. His proposed transportation bill would have cut about 20 percent from the last transportation bill, which was signed by President Bush in 2005.

The USPS pegs projected losses over the next ten years at a colossal $238 billion, based on ongoing precipitous declines in first-class mail use. Both industry insiders and government officials, however, say that number is ludicrously inflated.

Ruth Goldway, chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission, an oversight agency that acts as a middleman between the Postal Service and the federal government at large, called it an “unsubstantiated figure with no basis in reality.”

Phil Dine, a spokesman for the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), which represents more than 90 percent of all letter carriers, tells The American Independent, “Nobody takes that seriously.” Both called the number a scare tactic that USPS management is using to jolt Congress to rush into reforms.

The numbers from the last several years seem to back up what Goldway and Dine say. Getting to $238 billion in losses by the start of the next decade would require the absolute worst annual loss the Postal Service has suffered in recent years to more than triple, then stay that high for the entire decade. Yet overall mail volume is actually increasing (though first-class mail is still far below pre-Internet-Revolution levels) as the country gradually claws its way out the recession, making such a scenario beyond unlikely.

Still, even if it’s not to the tune of $238 billion, there’s no denying that the Postal Service is in trouble. It ended 2010 with a net operating loss of $8.5 billion, marking the fourth straight year — and the worst of them yet — that the USPS has ended up in the red. But industry insiders say these grim numbers — the source of anti-labor grousing from the likes of Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) — leave out a crucial part of the complete picture, a piece that completely flips the narrative on the dire straits the Postal Service allegedly faces.

A retirement deal struck

The roots of the issue go back 40 years. In 1971, the federal government authorized a complete overhaul of the postal system. It replaced the nearly 200-year-old Post Office Department with the U.S. Postal Service, which has delivered the mail ever since. The main difference between the two, though the changeover may have been little noticed by the public, is that the Post Office Department was a Cabinet-level department of the federal government and, as such, was funded with federal money. The Postal Service is a federal agency in a much looser sense and operates entirely on revenue generated by consumer purchases.

At the time of the changeover, the new Postal Service struck a deal with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal agency that oversees all federal civil service programs (such as the old Post Office Department). For those postal workers who began their careers before 1971, the OPM would use federal funds to contribute to pension plans at a rate based on 1971-level earnings, without adjustments for inflation or post-‘71 pay raises. The USPS agreed to keep using the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), the pension system for all federal employees, for simplicity’s sake.

Over the next several decades, inflation rose and postal worker salaries grew, from an average of under $10,000 annually at the time of reorganization to over $50,000 today (PDF). As a result, the USPS has contributed an increasingly disproportionate part of pension costs to the CSRS each year since 1971.

‘Pre-funding the grandkids of people who haven’t been born yet’

By 2003, the Postal Service began lobbying Congress to do something to reform the system and reduce its pension obligation. Instead, in 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which, among other things, required the Postal Service to fund 75 years’ worth of retiree health benefits over ten years. Of this singular requirement, the NALC’s Phil Dine says, “It’s pre-funding the grandkids of people who haven’t been born yet. No other organization, public or private, has to do anything like that.”

And that, to bring it all full circle, is where the budget shortfalls come in, according to postal worker union representatives, as well as the Postal Service itself. Each year, September 30 (the end of the fiscal year) hits, and the Postal Service has to dump $5.5 billion into its Retiree Health Benefit Fund. Without that requirement, the Postal Service’s annual profits could have reached as high as $3.3 billion in recent years. Of course, the $8.5 billion loss last year still leaves $3 billion in red ink even after discounting the retiree fund money, but Jim Sauber, head economist and chief of staff for the NALC, contends that even that shortfall is simply the result of a “non-cash” adjustment to the USPS workers’ compensation fund, following tumbling interest rates.

The short end of the stick

Indeed, though the recession and the rise of online communication have put an undeniable damper on mail in general, Dine reports that the latest figures have the USPS making $226 million in net profit in the first quarter of this year — a trend that should continue, at least until September 30 comes around. Even when offset by the hit the Postal Service takes from that non-cash workers’ comp adjustment based on slashed interest rates, Dine says that the USPS would have made $837 million since 2007, were it not for the pre-funding requirement.

Still, despite the singularity of the requirement, the NALC argues that the Postal Service does have the money to remain afloat, if it were simply allowed to use it. Those disproportionate pension contributions? According to external audits performed by consultants from the Segal Company and the Hay Group, the Postal Service has put anywhere between $50 and $75 billion extra into the CSRS since 1971.

The USPS would like to use that money to cover its retirement obligations, but the Office of Personnel Management controls the funds, and recognizing the overage would mean making up the difference itself. “We’re happy to pay our fair share,” says the NALC Chief of Staff Sauber. “We just don’t want to get the short end of the stick, which is what we’ve gotten from OPM.”

Even the OPM concedes that it’s not unreasonable for the Postal Service to seek a re-evaluation of how pension contributions are tabulated. “[In 2003], the Postal Service proposed that the obligations for pre-1971 service be calculated on the basis of a simple years-of-service approach,” OPM planning director John O’Brien told the House Oversight Committee at a hearing last year. “Other than one technical flaw [a quibble over annuity growth], this is not an inconceivable approach. While it may be worthy of future consideration by the Congress, OPM believes that it is not possible based upon current legislation.”

Postal Service: Soon to be extinct?

That last detail is the sticking point in all this. Any change would require an act of Congress, a fact emphasized by unions, the Postal Service and the OPM alike. Unfortunately for the Postal Service, Congress is unlikely to act on this any time soon.

With a 2012 budget fight looming, any solution that would increase the federal deficit by shifting money from a federal pension system into a financially independent organization’s retirement accounts is not going to be popular.

As if to confirm this very notion, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) introduced a bill last month that would resolve this exact issue by transferring all surplus contributions into the USPS Retiree Health Benefit Fund. The American Postal Workers Union Thursday came out in support of the bill, and higher-ups at NALC tell The American Independent that they’re happy with it as well, but it may not have the necessary support where it counts. The bill has just 35 co-sponsors in the House. It’s currently in the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee, which has instead turned its attention to a new Postal Service labor contract that House Democrats, postal unions and USPS management have all called fair, but that committee Republicans have alleged is too labor-friendly and only underscores the value of private courier services like UPS and FedEx.

In a hearing last month, amid Republican claims that the contract is inflexible and promotes high labor costs, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said, “The Postal Service has become a dinosaur that will soon be extinct […] and that’s why I use FedEx and UPS.” In fact, one of the Postal Service’s fast-growing sectors is what it calls “last-mile service,” in which it delivers packages door-to-door on behalf of UPS and FedEx, which don’t provide universal service.

Of the push to devalue postal unions and avoid releasing the pension funds, Sauber asks, “Should we really be crushing the Postal Service right now, at a time of 9 percent unemployment?” Congress has five months to decide its answer to that question. If the answer falls to Oversight Committee Republicans, America’s Postal Service may become all but unrecognizable in the near future.

From their statement:

We share Ms. Bachmann’s concerns about ACORN’s involvement in the 2010 Census and will continue pressuring the Bureau to follow their own guidelines for partnering organizations and dump ACORN. However, we can not emphasize enough how important it is for every individual to fill out their census forms.

Every elected representative in this country should feel a responsibility to encourage full participation in the census. To do otherwise is to advocate for a smaller share of federal funding for our constituents. Boycotting the constitutionally-mandated census is illogical, illegal and not in the best interest of our country.

The unfortunate irony is that Ms. Bachmann’s boycott only increases the likelihood that ACORN-recruited census takers will be dispatched to her constituents’ homes. Anyone who completes and returns their census form will remove any need for a census taker to visit their residence.

Furthermore, a boycott opens the door for partisans to statistically adjust census results. The partisan manipulation of census data would irreparably transform the census from being the baseline of our entire statistical system into a tool used to wield political power in Washington.

You don’t usually hear Republicans criticizing a fellow member in such a public and official capacity.

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Despite unanimous opposition from House Republicans to the Democrats’ $787 billion economic stimulus plan, members of the GOP are now cheering certain elements of the bill that will benefit their districts, The New York Times reports today.

Just hours after voting against the bill on the House floor last week, Representative John L. Mica of Florida issued news releases lauding the inclusion of $8 billion for high-speed rail projects around the nation. Mr. Mica said the bill would also help pay for a commuter train project in his Central Florida district.

“If we could put a man on the moon, we should be able to move people from city to city quickly instead of wasting time on a congested highway,” said Mr. Mica, the ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “I applaud President Obama’s recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America’s future.”

This is no surprise. A bill like the stimulus puts Republicans in a pickle, as their political instinct to decry the federal spending runs smack into the reality that the money pays for services their constituents need, particularly in the middle of a disastrous economic environment. Nor can GOP leaders fall back on the tired line that the stimulus represents another case of the Democrats’ “tax-and-spend” tendencies — not with $287 billion in tax rebates included in the package.

Instead, you get “small-government” Republicans like Rep. Don Young (Alaska) cheering the enormous spending bill as “a victory for the Alaska Native contracting program and other Alaska small business owners,” The Times reports.

The Republicans defend this inconsistency with the claim that they can support certain elements of the stimulus without having voted for the package as a whole.

A spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Jennifer Crider, characterized the trend more accurately. It is, she told The Times, “the height of hypocrisy.”