Senate Dems, GOP differ on saving USPS

With friends like these, the U.S. Postal Service needs no enemies.


“Seniors love getting junk mail,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday. “It’s sometimes their only way of communicating or feeling like they’re part of the real world.”


Wow.


Act now! If you don’t, seniors will stop getting junk mail, the only thing that makes them feel human.


After all, telephones do not exist. There is no television. And no one over 60 is capable of using the Internet.


Some people send birthday cards. Other people telephone their grandparents. I just fill out company mailer forms in their names.


Nothing says, “You are a part of the real world” like bulk coupons from Red Lobster. There’s no feeling like that feeling when you open your mailbox and get that glossy mailer addressed to Occupant or Current Resident. A phone call pales in comparison.


Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is proposing an amendment that would "prohibit the closing of a rural post office unless certain conditions are met and to establish a moratorium on the closing of rural post offices." Similarly, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is offering an amendment that keeps "the Postal Service from closing, consolidating, or reducing the workforce of certain postal facilities." Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the top messaging Democrat in the chamber, has an amendment meant to "maintain all current door delivery point services." 


Meanwhile, Paul is offering a number of amendments to curtail union bargaining rights for mail service employees. For example, one amendment prohibits employees "from engaging in collective bargaining." Paul is also proposing an amendment that closes "post offices in the Capitol Complex." Another, also sponsored by Paul, makes the mail service "take into consideration the impact of regulations when developing a profitability plan."
Sen. Jim DeMint is also offering an amendment that protects "postal workers with respect to their right not to subsidize union nonrepresentational activities." Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-Okla.) amendment would let the service "close unprofitable office facilities." 

Both Senate Republicans and their Democratic counterparts spent the last week or so debating the postal bill. Both sides argued strongly in support of reforming the service so that it could avoid going broke, but the amendments to which the chamber agreed suggest two different approaches to how the service should be saved.