MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript
Interview
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SCHULTZ: This doesn`t get enough conversation. I want to talk about
the Republican mission -- and that`s exactly what it is -- to take down the
Post Office. Congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Government
Oversight Committee, is leading the charge.
He says he`s trying to save the Post Office, but in reality he is
pushing a bill to absolutely destroy it. This is just the beginning. If
Darrell Issa has his way, more than 3,000 Post Office branches will be shut
down across the country, most of them in rural communities where they need
the service. And 200,000 Post Office jobs would be lost.
Yeah, they kind of like that too. And there really is no reason for
any of this. Republicans will tell you that the Postal Service is just in
huge trouble because they`re losing money, about 20 billion over five
years. But here`s the thing that they`re not telling you: the reason the
Post Office is losing money is because of a 2006 law passed in the lame
duck session of a Republican Congress. They stuck it to the workers one
more time before they left.
The law requires the Post Office to pre-fund employees` retirement
accounts for the next 75 years over a little 10-year window. So they are
doing the burden for the future right now. It costs them 5.5 billion
dollars a year to fund those pensions. What for? Hell, they`re funding
people that aren`t even working for the Post Office yet.
Maybe Congress should have to fund their retirement for the next 75
years in a 10-year window. See how well the Tea Partiers can balance the
budget then. They couldn`t. No one can. No business does it this way.
I want to show you exactly how much your money, your taxpayer dollars
go to fund the Post Office this year. Zero. That`s a zero. You got that?
That means none of the tax dollars out of your pocket go to the government
to fund the Post Office.
So what the heck is this all about? This is what pays for the Post
Office operations right here. It`s these things called stamps. They still
work in America, I use them damned near every day.
Here`s why Republicans want to kill the Post Office. They want to
privatize everything they can get their hands on. They want to privatize
the Postal Service so their corporate boys down the street here can make
more money.
They want to destroy union infrastructure. They hate unions any way,
shape, or form, because it`s a dues thing. And they want to destroy a
voting bloc. They want to pit worker against worker. They want to
disenfranchise people.
They want to get them out of work and get them upset, so they won`t
vote for the Democrats. And they are on a mission to get rid of any
government job they can.
But guess what, the number of one group of people hired by the Post
Office are military veterans. Issa won`t tell you that either. I expect
this kind of action from Republicans. But what bothers me is that
Democrats, you`re not fighting hard enough.
You know, you`re doing a great job of going after the Ryan Budget.
We`re going to help you do that. I will on this show. But you`ve got to
step up and do something big time to save the Post Office from utter
disaster. This is a real opportunity for the Democrats to correct a
terrible injustice on workers in America.
It makes absolutely no sense, and has been totally -- totally
manufactured by the right-wingers like Darrell Issa. This is a less --
there is, of course, I should say, a less aggressive bill before the Senate
that would alleviate some of the pension problems. But you`ve got to hit
it out of the park on this one, Democrats.
My guest on this has a better solution for all of it. I`m joined
tonight by Bernie Sanders, independent senator from Vermont. Senator, good
to have you with us tonight.
This is one of these stories that I think I have to tell maybe every
three weeks or once a month before the election, because I`m hearing on the
radio, well, gosh, I didn`t know that stamps pay for everything. I`m
hearing on the radio, well, I didn`t know about this 75-year thing into a
10-year window. No business could do that.
So I ask you, senator, what is Congress going to do? What do you
think they should do to reverse all of this?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: Well, there`s a lot we should do.
The original plan, as you indicated, Ed, that came from the Post Master
General, would have shut down 3,700 rural Post Offices, which would have
been devastating to rural America.
I mean, many, many small towns exist around their Post Office. So it
really would have been a terrible thing. The Post Master General
originally wanted to shut down half of the processing plants in America,
about 250 of them.
All told, he wanted to shrink the workforce by over 200,000 workers in
the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,
wanted to end Saturday mail delivery, wanted to slow down mail delivery
standards.
What happened is Senators Lieberman and Carper introduced a bill that
certainly was a heck of a lot better than what the Post Master General had
proposed. In my view, it did not go far enough.
I brought together two dozen members of the Senate. We are working on
now what`s called a manager`s amendment that would go a long way toward
protecting the Postal Service.
SCHULTZ: Senator, all of that is great. And I appreciate you doing
it. But shouldn`t the Democrats be making a commitment to American workers
that, look, if we get the White House, the House and the Senate back, we`re
going to change this 75-year thing. Because this is the crippling
financial stipulation that has been put on the Postal Service, that is
going to destroy businesses in rural America that need this service.
It`s the funding of the pension. And will the Democrats turn that
around?
SANDERS: Well, I hope so. That`s what we have, for all intent and
purposes, in the manager`s amendment that I and others have worked on.
There is no entity in America, not any agency of government, not any
private corporation, that has anything near this kind of onerous
requirement in terms of funding --
SCHULTZ: Nobody?
SANDERS: -- Future retiree --
SCHULTZ: No private business would run like this.
SANDERS: Now, here`s -- here`s what`s interesting, Ed. The inspector
general wrote to me -- of the Post Office, wrote to me and said, hey, they
got 44 billion dollars in that account right now. And when they compound
interest, the three or four percent a year, that`s all they need. They
don`t need anymore.
So you`re absolutely right that one of the important steps forward is
to end this 5.5 billion every single year.
But the second thing we have to do is we have to give the Post Office
a lot more freedom and flexibility to go out and bring in new revenue.
There are real restrictions. You walk into a Post Office right now, you
want to get a letter notarized, they can`t do it. You want to get letters
copied --
SCHULTZ: Let them compete.
SANDERS: You want to get a hunting license -- that`s right. And
we`re working on that as well. But the goal here is that in the middle of
a recession, you don`t downsize by 200,000 good-paying jobs, including, as
you indicated, many veterans.
SCHULTZ: Forty five billion dollars in that fund right now. Let me
see, the Republicans want to get rid of the Postal Service, is what they
want to do. So when they get rid of it, there`s going to be all this money
there. That would be just another fund that they`re going to be able to
raid and do something else with it.
You mark my words, that`s exactly where it`s all going. Senator, I
appreciate your work on this. Keep going after it. It is an issue, a
winning issue for Democrats and workers in this country.
Great to have you with us.
Coming up, Oscar-nominated actor Mark Ruffalo has a new campaign to
stop hydraulic fracking. He`s coming here to tell us all about it. Stay
with us.
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