60 House Bills to Name Post Offices, Zero To Fix Mail Service
In the 18 months the 112th Congress has been sworn in,
the House has introduced 60 bills to rename post offices. Thirty-eight have passed the House and 26
have become law. During those 18 months, the House has produced 151 laws, 17
percent of which have been to rename post offices, according to Congressional
Democrats.
Not a single bill has come to the House floor aimed at
reforming a Postal Service, which is bleeding billions of dollars because of
Congressional mandates.
Today the United States Postal Service will default on a
Congressional mandate to pay $5.5 billion to “prefund” health benefits for
future retirees. On Friday, the House of Representatives will leave town for a
five-week summer vacation. There is no plan to take up postal reform before
that summer recess.
The Postal Service has attempted to enact an array of
cost-cutting measures to pull itself out of a $22.5 billion budget shortfall.
Over the past five years USPS has cut more than 110,000 employees. The mail
service, which takes no taxpayer money but is regulated by Congress, has
announced plans to close or consolidate 230 mail processing centers, cutting
13,000 jobs and saving an estimated $1.2 billion annually.
The service attempted to close 3,700 post offices under a
plan announced last year, but after public outcry decided to cut operating
hours to between two and six hours per day at 13,000 locations. USPS claims
that move will save $500 million per year.
One of the largest cost-saving measures would be ending Saturday
mail delivery, a move the Postal Service says will save $3.1 billion a year.
But USPS can’t cut delivery without Congressional approval, and partisan
disagreements over whether Congress should take control of USPS’s operations
until it is solvent again or if it should leave the decision making to the
postmaster general have halted any action on Capitol Hill.
USPS claims that if Congress does not act, the mail
service will default not only on the $5.5 billion payment due today, but also
on another $5.6 billion payment for future retiree’s benefit due September 30.
The Postal Service has pleaded with Congress for years to
end the requirement that it pre-fund its retiree’s health benefits. But many
lawmakers claim that because USPS has such a massive workforce – there are
614,000 Postal Service employees—if it does not pre-fund retirement benefits,
it will not be able to pay them in the future.
And as long as these disagreements persist, it looks like
naming post offices is the closest Congress will get to passing postal reform.
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