United States Postal Service Financial Relief Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the introduction of this bill on January 6, the first legislative day, was appropriate. This is a problem for an organization, the United States Post Office, which is, in fact, 15 times larger than General Motors. The United States Post Office is not only a constitutional obligation but, in fact, an organization which has existed for the service of the United States of America since our founding.

But since the 1970s, the United States Post Office has had a problem. The problem is our own success. Alternate efficiencies have reduced the need for the United States Post Office to deliver mail. Invoices, payments, and certainly many other emails instead of paper mails are being delivered electronically today. The United States Post Office is also suffering from a recession that we all are suffering under.

Therefore, the committee has worked on a bipartisan basis to recognize that we must reform the post office again. Having just passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act in 2006, we are faced with another crisis; but rather than having that crisis lead to haphazard reductions, the chairman and I have worked together with Members on both sides of the aisle, as the chairman said, 339 cosponsors, to create a soft landing for the post office.

It will not be that soft, Mr. Speaker. It will, in fact, require that they accelerate the reduction in their force. It will require that they look at all costs and services. It will require without a doubt the closing of post offices around our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, these are difficult decisions. They are both financial and they're political. They impact the communities who have for so long allowed people to go to their corner post office to maintain a postal mailbox, to do other services. These services will be further away in the future.

So for that reason, although I would have preferred a major reform, I would have preferred that we were able to do some of these hard steps, I'm supporting an alternate course, one in which we use these last 2 weeks and only these last 2 weeks of the fiscal year to move this bill with a cost, as the chairman said, of zero because there is so little time left in the year. However, we are committed on this side of the aisle and I know the chairman shares this, to work with the postal service to find ways to reduce their costs, their overhead, and many of the legacy items that today make it difficult.

Mr. Speaker, I want to repeat something the chairman said because it's noteworthy for my conservative friends. The post office's money that we are talking about today is the money they have put aside. This is the only agency that works in this way. So although this could have scored, it does not score, and although people will often say that we are being fiscal conservatives if we vote against this, the truth is the postal service operates within its own funds. The funds that will be used in H.R. 22 are their funds. Ultimately the American people will look to the post office to make the corrections. This committee on a bipartisan basis will oversee the post office to see that they come in line for the future so they continue to operate on their own revenue and not on any revenue provided by Congress.

So, Mr. Speaker, I hope my friends are listening. I hope this will go far behind the 339 cosponsors, and I hope that everyone on both sides of the aisle will put down their mark today to make sure that we commit ourselves working with the post office to do the necessary reforms so we will not be back here again in the same way next year.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

I would like to comment on the Delegate's statement because it is quite true. Just in the last approximately 18 months, we have added almost 200,000 net Federal workers on the Federal side. The post office is continuing to reduce its workforce, anticipating reducing its workforce by about 30,000, or more than 5 percent per year. We have to do better.

I look forward to working with the majority on finding ways that we can integrate more postal workers into other Federal opportunities so we can retain these good Federal servants, but at the same time right-size the post office.

Having said that, it is very clear, as Ms. Norton said, that only the post office is really cutting itself in the Federal Government, and that is an unusual situation. They are right-sizing themselves, and I hope all of our Members will be sensitive that we have to right-size them at a rate that allows our high quality service to continue.

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

All that need be said has more or less been said. This is necessary. It scores no cost. It is a reality of our recession and the ongoing reduction in the number of pieces of mail being carried by the post office. I might note in closing, the United Parcel Service, FedEx, DHL and others have experienced even greater reductions in their package carrying. That is part of this recession. This recession will end. But when this recession ends, the use of email and advertising over the Internet rather than your mailbox will continue.

So I look forward to working with the chairman. He and I have forged a very good relationship on these bipartisan issues. We need to create the right size postal system. We need to convert and retain postal workers as Federal employees where there are opportunities. That is what we really need the time to do.

As the chairman and I close, I want to urge all of my colleagues to understand, I am putting down a marker here today that I will not be bringing back the exact same bill next year simply to forestall it. We will monitor the usage at the post office and work with them, work with the Postmaster, and we will work with each other to make sure that we begin in a very, very quick order the kinds of reforms that may cost money but ultimately will right-size the post office.

That is a commitment the American people expect us to make and one we will make. But at the same time, I recognize that the postal service is right-sized to perform an incredibly important constitutional duty, one that none of us would want to see go away. Certainly at a time when a number of States have gone to postal voting, they now represent a key element of democracy even beyond what they have historically done.

I thank the chairman for this bipartisan work, and I thank Mr. McHugh who could not be here today for his relentless support and work. I urge strong support that we vote this out of the House on a unanimous basis.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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