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Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. Madam President, the Postal Service Reform Act before us here today represents consensus on essential reforms for the U.S. Postal Service, overdue for over a decade.

This legislation will ensure the Postal Service can provide long- term, reliable, 6-day-a-week service across the country, and put it on stable financial footing.

This amendment changes key service protections in the bill and adds new harmful provisions tailored to special interests of Postal Service competitors.

Our bill requires the Postal Service to maintain its current standard of delivery at least 6 days per week. It is absolutely essential to protect 6-day delivery so the Postal Service can continue serving as a critical lifeline for countless communities that rely on the mail for medications, for rent payments, for critical supplies, for Social Security checks, and so much more.

This amendment would change how the Postal Service operates today by altering their integrated network that allows mail and packages to be delivered together. This is more efficient for both the Postal Service and for their customers.

Instead, this amendment seeks to undermine the Postal Service's ability to compete against private carriers that do not have the same requirements to deliver to every single community in the United States of America.

The amendment would also force publication of contract information to Postal Service competitors. This would give away commercially sensitive information to private carriers and provide an unfair advantage, when the Postal Regulatory Commission already reviews every Postal Service contract to ensure both compliance as well as fairness.

I appreciated Senator Portman's thoughtful comments against changing the key service protections in this bill. It is time to pass this bipartisan legislation as drafted and getting it signed into law.
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Mr. PETERS. Madam President, this bill is limited to absolutely essential, consensus, bipartisan reforms that are necessary to ensure that the Postal Service can survive and can continue delivering for the American people.

Everything in this bill has bipartisan agreement. This bill passed the House by a vote of 342 to 92. It has broad support from the public, from the business community, and other stakeholders.

In contrast, this amendment is inflammatory and unnecessary to the postal bill. It is meant to be a poison pill. It would add abortion- inducing drugs to the list of nonmailable matter under postal law.

Under current law, the list of nonmailable matter includes items ranging from grenades to explosives, to controlled substances and narcotics.

However, the Postal Service is free to mail any FDA-approved drugs that are prescribed by healthcare providers and sent by either a pharmacy or a doctor.

There are no other FDA-approved medications that are prohibited from being mailed to patients in need.

This amendment is an attack on reproductive rights that would make it more difficult for women and families to safely access critical medical care, and it imposes an unnecessary hardship on women and families who are accessing their care using telemedicine, especially during a pandemic.

This amendment simply has no place in a bipartisan postal reform bill.

Madam President,
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Mr. PETERS. Madam President, I oppose the Scott amendment, which would gut the bipartisan Postal Service Reform Act by nullifying the Medicare integration proposal.

Medicare integration is an absolutely key part of this bipartisan bill to provide long-term financial stability for the Postal Service. My colleague Senator Portman spoke recently about why these criticisms of Medicare integration are simply unfounded.

This bill simply provides for future postal retirees, who have already paid into Medicare throughout their entire careers, to enroll in Part B and Part D. Roughly a quarter of postal retirees do not enroll in Medicare even though they are eligible. This means the Postal Service is stuck paying higher premiums.

This bill simply allows the Postal Service to do what other businesses and employers already do all across our country by integrating these retirees into Medicare. This saves the Postal Service money and saves taxpayer money. This bill reduces the deficit over 10 years by nearly $1.5 billion.

CBO has also made clear that the bill does not affect the Part A trust fund and will not have any effect on Medicare Part B or Part D premiums.

Postal workers are already eligible for Part A, and the number of new postal workers going into Part B will be fewer than 40,000 individuals, and that compares to 62 million people currently in the program.

The Postal Service Reform Act does not harm Medicare. It provides savings to the Postal Service and to taxpayers. It allows the Postal Service to survive, regain stable financial footing, and keep delivering for every single American. We need to stop delaying this bill. We need to pass the bill.
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Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, in just a few moments, each of our colleagues will have the opportunity to cast a historic vote to pass groundbreaking legislation that will ensure that the U.S. Postal Service can continue its nearly 250-year tradition of delivering service to the American people.

The Postal Service is one of our Nation's most trusted and storied institutions. Since the founding of the United States, the Postal Service has become a vital part of the fabric of our Nation for generations.

It has served as an indispensable public service that not only delivers critical mail, like medications and financial documents, but also helps families all across the country stay connected with each other.

The Postal Service is the only mail carrier that delivers to every community across our Nation and serves more than 160 million households--no matter how remote.

However, in recent years, we have seen how burdensome financial requirements drove the Postal Service to use cost-cutting measures that compromised delivery services. And that is why this bipartisan bicameral bill is so vital. It will help the Postal Service overcome unfair policies that threaten its ability to effectively service the American people.

Since introducing this bill, I have worked closely with my ranking member, Rob Portman, and our 26 other Senate cosponsors from both sides of the aisle, as well as Chairwoman Maloney and Ranking Member Comer on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, to craft these consensus reforms and secure the strong bipartisan support we have seen in both the House and, hopefully soon, in the Senate.

I am grateful to each of my colleagues for their hard work and for their cooperation and their willingness to compromise during this process.

Our legislation, which it has been 15 years in the making, will eliminate the unnecessary requirement for the Postal Service to prefund the cost of retiree health benefits and will integrate postal retirees healthcare with Medicare.

Together, these reforms will save the Postal Service more than $49 billion and ensure this essential public service, which is dependent on revenues from products and service fees to fund its operations, is set on a path for long-term financial stability.

This historic legislation will also ensure every American knows what is going on with the mail in their community by requiring the Postal Service to post weekly local performance data online.

It will also ensure this vital institution continues to deliver mail at least 6 days a week. By passing the Postal Service Reform Act, we can ensure the Postal Service is able to provide reliable service to families and small businesses, veterans, seniors, and rural communities who rely on this essential service each and every day for years to come.

By passing this legislation tonight and quickly sending it to President Biden's desk, this body can show the Nation that Congress can indeed build consensus; we can work on a bipartisan basis and get things done for the American people. Together, we can enact historic, meaningful change and improve the lives of our constituents.

I urge my colleagues to vote in support of this long-overdue bill so that we can take a historic and significant step to bring the Postal Service into the future and ensure it can continue providing essential services to the American people, as it has done for nearly 250 years.

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