Patent and Trademark office needs financial independence | Richmond Times-Dispatch

It's effectively a Ponzi scheme. It depends on a large stream of payments from new customers to serve those who have already paid in full. It has a huge unfunded liability in the form of future commitments for which the government has no assets to back them. Worst of all, in recent decades, Congress has repeatedly redirected customer payments for other purposes, thereby exacerbating the system's financial woes.