The Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

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POSTAL REFORM

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today the Postmaster General announced that the Postal Service would begin the process of consolidating about 140 processing facilities around the country. Despite the harsh realities of this announcement from the Postmaster General, there are a few bright spots in Illinois.

The processing facilities in Springfield and Fox Valley, which the Postmaster General had originally slated for closure, will remain open. Additionally, I am glad that the Postmaster General has heeded our calls to keep Illinois jobs in Illinois and other jobs in the States where the processing facilities currently exist. The Postmaster General's original plan would have potentially sent over 500 Illinois postal jobs to surrounding States, along with the mail they have processed so efficiently for so many years.

Beyond the postal employees, the Postal Service supports tens of thousands of private sector jobs in Illinois, which is the center of the mailing and printing industry.

Certainly, today's announcements are difficult for my constituents who live in Quincy and Rockford, Carbondale and Centralia, Bloomington and Effingham. I have consistently insisted--and the Postmaster General assured me--that we are going to avoid layoffs and that all of the employees in these facilities will have the opportunity to pursue another role in the Postal Service or to accept, if they wish, early retirement incentives. I am told none of these facilities will close before the end of the year.

As I said, today's news is disappointing and difficult for many in my State, including postal customers, postal employees, and small businesses. Still, I think it is important to note how far we have come from the Postmaster General's original plan to where we are today. Originally he sought closure of 250 processing facilities nationwide--today's announcement, 140--and called for the closure of 3,700 mostly rural post offices.

In Illinois, the Postal Service originally targeted 9 plants for closure which employ over 1,800 people. After countless hours of meetings and hard work and a great deal of floor debate, we have moved off the potentially destructive path.

Let me say this too, Mr. President. You know this subject better than any other Member in the Senate. We met in my office with the Postmaster General--I believe in November or early December--sat down with him and said that his proposal to reduce the number of post offices and processing facilities could be the death knell of postal service as we know it today.

You will remember that we challenged them. We said: Mr. Postmaster General, do not make any of these changes until May 15. Give Congress an opportunity to come up with a way to save money for the Postal Service, to preserve the Postal Service, and to do it by way of legislation, which is why we were elected.

He reluctantly said he didn't want to do it. Reluctantly he gave us a letter and said: I won't do anything until May 15. I will give the House and the Senate a chance to do their work.

If you will remember, Mr. President, I called Senator Lieberman, chairman of the administration committee--the government operations committee, and said to him: With this jurisdiction, we have to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

He said: We are ready. Senator Collins and I and Senator Carper and others will work together to pass a Senate bill that achieves Postal Service reform in a fairer way.

And he did.

The same day, I called Chairman Darrell Issa, the California Republican chairman of the House committee with the responsibility for the Postal Service. I said to Chairman Issa: We now have until May 15 to do our job, to pass a bill in the House and the Senate and get it to the President, and now the clock is running.

Mr. President, you will remember that we had a break over the holiday, and when we came back we were anxious. We didn't want to waste any time. Let the record show that at the end of the day, the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, passed the postal reform bill. Thirteen Republicans joined 49 on the Democratic side and passed a bipartisan bill.

Well, what happened in the House? The answer is nothing happened in the House. The House of Representatives failed to do their job. They failed to pass Postal Service reform. To my knowledge, they didn't bring a bill to the floor. And then May 15 came. The Postmaster General kept his word and waited, and then he made this announcement.

If the Senate bill that we passed had become the law of the land, today's announcement would have never taken place. We set up a process for post offices and processing facilities to be evaluated in terms of their efficiency and costs that I think was sensible, reasonable, and would have saved money. We didn't get to that point because the House failed to act. That is the harsh reality of why we face

what we do today.

Only the Speaker of the House and his majority can explain why they didn't accept the challenge to legislate. My question to them is, If you are not here to legislate, why are you here? An issue of such national importance as the future of the Postal Service should have been done, as it was in the Senate, on a bipartisan basis in the House of Representatives. We did it here. We worked together. I cannot even remember how many amendments we considered, but we labored through every single one of them and got it done.

Now I look around my State and see six or seven major processing facilities closed, and it breaks my heart because what we did in the Senate would have avoided some of those. It would have at least put a process in place that was a lot fairer.

Well, my last word to the Members of the House is that it is not too late. It is not too late to accept the responsibility and to pass the Senate bill if you can't pass one of your own. Call our bipartisan Senate postal reform bill to the floor. At least give it a vote in the House of Representatives.

If they can pass it, let's send it to the President, and perhaps before the end of the year we can actually save some of these postal facilities.

I don't want to create false hope because I couldn't believe that May 15 would come and go and the House wouldn't act, but that is what happened. So let's hope that changes for the better.

I am going to continue to work with the Presiding Officer as well as the President of the United States and all of the committee members. The Postal Service is something special.

I will close by saying this. When they ask Americans what they think of people who work in the Federal Government, they don't always have the highest opinion--including Members of Congress. But when you ask them about what branch of the Federal Government they have particularly positive feelings about, it is the Postal Service. You know why, and I do too. It is that letter carrier who is looking in the window and waving at your mom to make sure she is OK each day, and she looks expectantly for the delivery of the mail even if it is just some circular. That is that visitor each day who keeps her in touch with the world and our Nation in touch with itself. That is the Postal Service.

I just went into the Springfield post office, my local branch, recently, and they couldn't have been kinder or more courteous, helping all the people who were there. Our postal employees are some of the best Federal employees in America, and I am proud of what they have done. I am sorry they are going through this change. It is not something we wanted to see happen.

We are going to do this in a way that is good for the future of the Postal Service. I hope the House will join us in this bipartisan effort.

I yield the floor.

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